


Captive in the starlight

by MorteMistrata



Series: Kidge Alternate Universes [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Forced Marriage, Friends to Lovers, royal au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-01-17 18:29:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12371538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteMistrata/pseuds/MorteMistrata
Summary: Katie Holt has lost her family in one fell swoop. Her brother is missing, her father is presumed dead, and her mother is locked in a depressive coma. The family name has fallen to her, and thus, the throne. How is she to handle this sudden responsibility and the choices that come with it?Otherwise known as:The self-indulgent Kidge royalty au





	1. Coronation day

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by hells-will-88 and fitzcarraldonighthawk. Thanks so much for your help guys!
> 
> I wrote this story for me. It's been a long time since I've done anything this self-indulgent, but I think that by doing so, I've created a story better written than I've done in a while. I hope that you all enjoy it, and that you read and review! Thank you

Her mother stares lifelessly at the pillow beside her, where her father used to sleep. A single, grey brown hair rests on it, marring the smooth, white surface.

 

Katie squeezes her hand, hoping that maybe the sheer force of her will might draw her back to the land of the living. An angry tear rolls down her cheek and onto the white bedlinens. Why does this have to fall to her? She’s not prepared; She’d never wanted this. “Wake up, mom. Please, come back for me.”

 

Her mother blinks slowly, and sighs. Her tangled hair falls into her face, and Katie sighs before brushing it back. She’d hoped that maybe today her mother would finally hear her, might actually wake up and wear her crown again today, but obviously the gods must hate her, because she is just as comatose as she had the day before, and the day before that. Katie dips her head, pressing her forehead into her mother's soft side. She can feel her chest move with every breath, filling up with air, and then spilling it out again. 

 

“I'm too young, I'm unprepared,” She sniffs. “I don't know how I'm supposed to replace you guys. I'm not ready.”

 

Katie’s the second born child, so it had never been more than a vague, and distant idea that she might one day have to step up. Since no one had ever expected her to have a chance to rule, she’d had free reign of her education. While she had studied alchemy and medicine, and how machines ticked and computed, her brother had memorized the traditions of their allies, and learned civics, and how to actually run their country. Katie can’t regret it; she loves knowing what she knows, but still, she wishes that she had’ve bothered to learn something, anything, so that she wasn’t so clueless. 

 

“Mom, please.” She pleads, her voice barely a broken whisper. 

 

Behind her, the door slides open.

 

“What?” Katie asks, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. Whoever it is doesn't speak until she dabs her eyes dry and turns to face them.

 

Shiro is waiting by the door, watching her with guarded eyes. He’d known her since she’d been a child, snot nosed, and with a penchant for getting herself covered in mud and grass stains. He’s practically her only friend, the only person in this castle that she trusts to see her mother like this, and to see her cry.

 

She sniffs and sinks back down onto the bed, her ceremonial dress weighing on her shoulders as if it’s been sewn together with threads of lead. “Sorry. I just- I-” Katie takes a deep, shaking breath. “Is it time?”

 

Shiro nods, and offers his right arm. His right arm, taken from him just like Matt had been taken from her. He was lucky enough to come back; Matt was not.  “It’s time. Are you ready?”

 

Not at all.

 

To accept the crown is to admit that her family is broken, and comatose and dead, but as her advisor had told her, to continue being stubborn, to continue funding expeditions into Zarkon’s territory that only lead to more missing, more dead, would lead to the court thinking her unfit of ruling, and she would have a rebellion on her hands to deal with. 

 

Katie slips her arm through his. Her sleeve doesn’t do much to soften the metal of his arm, but she doesn’t care; it’s grounds her, keeps her from running away like she wants to.  “Of course.” She lies, her voice shaking. “Of course I am.”

 

Shiro leads her through the winding halls in silence, shooting her concerned glances as often as he dares. The halls are empty, spotless. Almost every servant employed by the castle is in the main hall, or in the kitchen preparing the feast, and attending to the guests. It’s strange, not passing anyone by in the more public halls. He stops her in front of the grand oak doors, and pulls her into a bone crushing hug. 

 

She sinks into his familiar grasp as he whispers into her ear, “You may be my Queen now, but you are still a girl who’s just lost her family. You can still mourn them.” He pulls away, and adjusts her dipping collar before resuming his proper position beside her.

 

They continue forward, and Shiro presses the switch on the wall,  and the doors spill open, welcoming her into a room filled with heady scent of expectation. The chairs at the end of the hall are filled with the few commoners deemed worthy of witnessing this event- war heros, and off-duty guards- and their eyes feel like spotlights trained on her. Katie can feel the back of her collar start to grow damp with nervous sweat. She can’t let it get to her. She can’t mess this up now. 

 

Katie sets her gaze on the throne at the end of the walkway, and starts to walk. The throne is beautiful; a creation grown rather than built; pruned and guided into the high backed chair it is now. Gold fills in the cracks and holes, and lines the green cushions pressed into the seat and backing. Her father used to sit in this chair, she thinks, and now she will. The emerald carpet stops just before the steps begin, a small lump there where the carpet has been pushed up. She takes a deep breath and turns around. 

 

The crowd in front of her is a blur of color and movement, and she can’t tell where the chairs begin and the people end. The priest steps away from his position beside the throne, and stands beside her. His wizened, old hands clasp around hers. “Princess Kathryn, of the Holt and Sutton lines, do you stand before me, ready to take on the burden that your father has passed down to you?”

 

She swallows. “Yes, I am.”

 

The Priest coughs into his shoulder, turning the dark, red fabric a shade darker. “Yes, yes. Now,” He coughs again, louder, and then looks up to meet her eyes. “Will you recite the ritual rites?”

 

Katie nods. She’s known these words for years, since she was young enough to recognize them under her father’s breath when he had to deal with something hard, or echoing in her brother’s room as he practiced the words, over and over until they flowed like water from his mouth. The words come to her easily, but still feel like a mockery as she says them.

 

“The new gods killed the old, and bestowed upon us the power to rule ourselves. For the burden of this power was too much for the common man, Aphelia bestowed this power upon her son, and henceforth, the royal family has ruled Terra. As I ascend, I promise as my father's father has promised, and his father before him, that I will put my country above my own heart's selfish wishes. The life of my country is my own, and I will serve you because we are one.” Katie bows her head, and the priest sets the heavy crown upon her head. Rather than a pretty ornamental piece, like the type the Alteans wear, the Terran crown is made of heavy iron, meant to weigh upon its wearer’s head to remind them of the weight of their decisions. The crown is heavy; it feels like she’s being forced to the ground, and already, she hates it.

 

She straightens up, and turns back to her father’s throne and climbs the stairs, each step in tune with the pounding of her heart. Katie takes her seat. Her dress takes up most of the room in the seat, it’s many layers of satin and silk spilling around her. She looks up at the crowd staring back at her and meets the eyes of new Empress Allura. Her pink eyes are bright, set on Katie’s dress and throne and crown with curious eyes. Out of anyone in this room, she might be the only one here who is just as new to this as she is. The Altean Kingdom had been silent for nearly two hundred years, and had only joined the coalition after the Western war began again five years ago. 

 

Katie’s father had attempted to become allies, if not friends, with the Alteans but his efforts had come to a halt when King Alfor was murdered in cold blood. Katie had only met Allura once or twice before, and that was before she was fluent in the common tongue, but she had seemed nice, and eager enough to make friends with her. She notices that Katie is watching her, and smiles, dropping her hand from where it’d been intertwined with the King of the South, Lance’s hand. 

 

On the opposite side of the isle sit the Galran Princes of New Daibazzal, Prince Lotor and Prince Keithian. Prince Lotor watches her watching him with an amused look in his yellow eyes. He smiles, and his fangs glint in the light like swords. She shifts her gaze to Prince Keithian, who’d been a close friend of hers before the war had began. He’d been Keith to her, no titles between them, and she’d been his Pidgeon. It had been a relief to be around him, to be no one important except for being his friend. It’s been years since they’ve spoken, but nevertheless, seeing him offer a tentative smile is enough to banish the remaining butterflies in her stomach.

 

The Priest steps aside, and calls out to the crowd, “Praise be to our new sovereign, Queen Kathryn of Terra!”

 

The crowd cheers, the royals clap and grin, and Katie realizes that the easy part is over, and that the worst of it is just about to begin. The other royals, her peers, are supposed to present her with gifts, which often foreshadow their future relationships with one another, and are supposed to represent her becoming one of the ruling class. It’s going to take hours to receive every royal in this hall, which means hours and hours of forced social interaction on which the future of her kingdom and the success of her reign depends on. Of course, her brother would’ve found this part easy, fun even. Talking to people, remembering how to accept gifts depending on the culture, and figuring out which words to say? That was his thing. He was nice, and easy to get along with, and would’ve loved the festivities today. The only part of the day that he would’ve had trouble with was the incantation, because as well and as long as he had known it, he still somehow managed to mess it up whenever he recited it to someone else. 

 

“Empress Allura, and the Southern King Lance of Altea!” The Herald calls as the applause dies down. 

 

Katie fiddles with her hands, hidden behind the flowing curtains of her skirts, as Empress Allura stands, her dress flowing off of her body like water. Her dress seems more comfortable than Katie’s fluffy green monstrosity, but she still curtseys stiffly, as if trying not to displace her outfit. A strand of curly, white hair escapes from her bun as she straightens up, and she quickly brushes it back behind her ear. “It was a pleasure to witness your ascension, Queen Kathryn. I do hope that our kingdoms may continue to work toward our shared goals of peace and innovation.” Her words are warm, but crisp, and have a slight lilt, marking her as a foreigner. But beyond that, she speaks in the voice of a monarch, one who has seen too much, too young. This is the voice that Shiro’s been telling her she has, whenever she switches from her easy vernacular to the proper one demanded by the court. Katie can tell that there is a girl inside of her who’s just as nervous as she is. 

 

Katie takes a gamble, and drops the proper script to speak like she normally does, like she would to a friend. “Me too, Empress. I hope that we can be friends more than anything. I know I sure could use one.”

 

Allura’s polite smile spreads into a warmer grin. “As could I.”  She steps aside, and Lance rises from his chair to join them.

 

King Lance is already wearing a warm smile, as he steps in front of her, and bows. As he stands, his blue tunic seems to shimmer in the light, like a lapis lazuli spun into cloth. “A pleasure, your Majesty. You look beautiful.” He steps aside, and gestures at the servants behind him. “I hope you like our gifts, though I doubt that anything that we could offer can rival your beauty.” He winks dramatically, and grins.

 

Allura rolls her eyes, but his words make her cheeks burn with embarrassment. 

 

Two servants stand from their seats, and carry a simple metal chest over, holding it out before the three of them. Allura presses the glowing teal button on the front, and it pops open to reveal a folded dress made of the same Altean silk as Lance and Allura’s clothes are made of, dyed in the colors of the Terran flag: Emerald green, yellow, and white. It’s beautiful, and undoubtedly expensive, and Katie has no idea how to wear something as beautiful as that without feeling self-conscious, but she likes it anyways. 

 

“Thank you, Empress. King Lance.” Katie says. “That was- That was beautiful. Thank you.”

 

Allura merely smiles, and nods, and then she and her court recede like the tide going out to sea.

 

“Prince Hunk, and Queen Shay of the Balmera.” The Herald calls. A man dressed in a simple yellow tunic and brown overcoat stands up, hesitating at his seat before the Balmeran woman beside him, Queen Shay, she presumes, whispers something encouragingly. He nods and then heads up to the throne, carrying a small chest in his ungloved hands. 

 

The Balmerans had been enslaved under Galran rule for nearly a hundred years, and they had only recently been freed during the turmoil that had resulted from the recent split within the kingdom. She remembers now, Katie thinks with a start. Prince Hunk had been a lowly commoner who’d gone to the Balmera to trade. When he’d gotten there, he’d ended up invited to their ball, and just like a fairy tale, fell in love with the Queen, and she with him. It had been the subject of court gossip for months; how could she forget? 

 

“Your Majesty.” Prince Hunk bows a little too deeply, and then straightens up, offering the chest to her as casually as one would offer a glass of mead. She looks at him curiously, and then unlatches it. Inside is a collection of vials and bottles, all labeled in meticulous and large handwriting. She catches a couple words- crystal shards, quintessence- before she closes it, and passes it over to a servant hovering nearby.

 

“An alchemy kit?” She guesses, some of her excitement leaking through her voice.

 

The Prince smiles sheepishly, and fiddles with the dull ring on his finger. “Well, uh, yes. I’ve heard many things about your work, about your personal library and the discovery of the new quartskill medicine system, and I thought that you might enjoy trying out this branch of science. I hope I didn’t overstep.” He adds.

 

“Oh, no, of course not. I love it, Prince Hunk. I’ve heard that you’ve made some innovations of your own. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to see them?” Katie really wishes that their audience would disappear; asking excitedly about machinery and mechanical carriages is not becoming of a new sovereign ruler, but that’s all she wants to do now that she realizes who he is.

 

Hunk smiles more confidently, and bows again before hurrying back to his seat. His wife smiles at him proudly, one of her hands resting on her pregnant stomach.

 

“Prince Lotor of West New Daibazzal.” 

 

Prince Lotor stands, his cape swooping behind him in a cascade of purple. His hair is pulled up into a high ponytail that seems to rival Allura’s locks in length. Katie doesn't know him too well; their ages were far enough apart for him to avoid interacting with her whenever she came to visit, but the few memories that she does have of him are enough to back up the various rumors she’s heard floating around. Cocky, proud, full of himself, and a liar with a tongue of honey. 

 

He bows before her, and kisses her hand. There are a strange lack of servants trailing behind him, and for that, she is suspicious. “Your Majesty, it is an honor to be here today, and to bask in the brilliance of your beauty. Please, enjoy the many gifts of my people. There are breathtaking, but never so much as you.” Prince Lotor moves to stand beside her, taking his place in the small gap between her and Shiro. She hears Shiro sigh exasperatedly, and then the quiet click of his boots as he steps aside. 

 

The doors at the opposite end of the room wing open, and a procession of servants step into the hall. The guests turn around row by row and gape at the bounty that they carry. Shields that glimmer in the light, swords and knives and daggers inlaid with jewels and cast in silver and gold. Scepters that seem questionably phallic-shaped, and armor, so pretty and thin that it’s practically useless except for decoration. Katie isn’t sure how long it takes before they finally stop, but by the end of it, there are mountains of stuff around her, and her servants are barely making a dent as they hurry to take it away. She glances over at Allura, and she is positively fuming. Her ears are a bright red, and her glare looks like it could kill, if Lotor would ever look over at her. Shay looks mad too, although she does a better job of hiding it behind a stony expression.

 

They’re not wrong to be mad. Prince Lotor has outdone just about everyone with his show of wealth. His wealth which comes from the subjugation of so many people, especially the Alteans and the Balmerans.  

 

Still, Katie knows better than to make a scene and deny his gifts, or to say something about his underhanded insult. “Thank you.” Katie says as Lotor bows before her once more. “I appreciate your generosity.”

 

“Nothing less would do for a lady as fair as you.” He says smoothly, before returning to his seat. 

 

Keith glares at Lotor as he sits down beside him, but his brother’s smile doesn’t shift an inch. 

 

“Prince Keith of East New Daibazzal.” The Herald calls.

 

Keith sighs heavily, and stands, his crimson overcoat dragging on the floor behind him. None of his servants, or his court follows him as he walks up to her throne. His hands are empty. His gait is slow. 

 

Katie knows him well enough to understand that he doesn’t want to be here. He tries to avoid his brother whenever he can, and to be forced to interact with him civilly during the duration of the festivities, well that’s almost too much to ask. Beyond that, she senses that there’s another reason for his unease, although she can’t tell what.

 

Keith stops before her throne, and bows. “Your Majesty. I-” He stops, and pushes aside his crimson tunic to pull a knife from his belt. Most of the room cannot see it, but the front row can, and their eyes go wide at the sight. It’s his mamoran blade, the knife that’s supposed to ‘hold his heart’. She’s not well versed in Galran culture, but even she knows the significance of him drawing it. He turns it around, and grips the blade, offering the handle to her. “I would like to ask for your hand in marriage. I offer you my blade, and my kingdom, and a life of love. Would you accept?”

 

Katie feels her heart stop.

 

Marriage? As in, marrying Keith?

 

She’d known that a proposal would be a possibility; she’s a single girl, of marrying age, sitting on a mountain of wealth and power. Who wouldn’t want to capitalize on her vulnerability while they had the chance? She just hadn’t expected it from Keith of all people. Shiro is tense beside her, and she knows that he can sense her confusion. What should she say? What should she do? Katie doesn’t remember the protocol for this. She doesn’t know what to say.

 

“Pidge?” Keith calls quietly, the nickname pulling her from her thoughts just as easily as it had when they were kids. “I know this is sudden, but, please. I’m trying to protect you. Please let me. Please trust me.”

 

A husband, and another kingdom to worry about; she doesn’t want anymore responsibility, but it keeps finding her anyways. The Terran Kingdom has been weakened by the war, by the loss of the royal family. Insurgents have already sprung up in the south, and Shiro has had to stop three assassination attempts in the last week alone. Katie is just a girl; she’s not ready, she’s nervous, she’s bad with people; but to marry Keith, that would be something that her parents would approve of, that her brother would urge her to do. Of all the choices that she has to make, this one should be the easiest. 

 

Katie reaches out tentatively, wraps her hand around the hilt, and pulls it from his grasp. The blade is made of that strange, purple metal that only the royals ever use, and an oval gem is embedded in the hilt. It feels strange. It feels like him.

 

She lifts it high, high enough for the whole hall to see. A cascade of gasps runs through the room. “I accept your proposal.” Katie says clearly, her voice unwavering despite her nervousness. “I will marry you.”

 

Keith smiles, and bows to her once more. A hint of a smile flashes across his face before he looks away, avoiding his brother’s angry gaze. “Did you ever think we’d end up like this?” He asks as he turns around, heading back to his seat. 

 

Orphaned, engaged, the rulers of their kingdoms. No, she hadn’t expected that at all.

 


	2. Storm

Katie stares at the book before her, and although the words are simple and plainly written, she can’t seem to understand a word she reads. It’s like her brain can’t catch onto the words, no matter how many times she rereads it.  _ If the partner proposed to is of another culture, then the marriage ceremony must be a combination of the two. Most details of a traditional Galran wedding can be disregarded, but three parts must always take place: the exchanging of tokens, the duel of affection, and the ward of consummation.  _ She sighs, and closes the book. A wave of dust blows out of it, settling on the stacks of parchment layered beside it. Maybe she should just take a break, try to get some rest. Today has been a long day; she could probably use some sleep to clear her head. 

 

A roll of thunder cracks against the sky, and she starts, almost knocking over the lantern balanced precariously on the corner of her desk. She looks out the window, surprised by the sudden storm. The water is beating down mercilessly, and although she doesn’t like rain all too much, she knows that it’ll do well for the gardens. She’ll have to find someone to take over her personal ones; she doubts that she’ll have the time to keep it up once she takes over her political responsibilities. And there’s another thing that she has to worry about, Katie thinks. 

 

A flash of lightning illuminates the balcony, and Keith appears, standing on the railing. His red tunic flutters in the wind, whipping against the night sky as he balances precariously. He steps down, and pushes open the glass doors. The storm blows in with him, spraying her room in a wash of cold water as she steps forward to meet him. 

 

The lantern flickers, casting strange shadows across his face. 

 

For a moment, they do nothing but stare; Katie, her mind muddled from the lack of sleep and the events of the day, can’t tell if he’s real or a figment of her imagination. Keith simply stares at her, his purple gaze simmering behind the inky curtain of hair that spills into his face. Another clap of thunder rolls behind him, and a gust of wind snaps her nightgown against the wind. 

 

“I need to explain.” Keith says, stumbling forward. She steps forward too, her hands hesitating over his chest, unsure if she needs to steady him or not. “I didn’t mean to- I didn’t want to do it that way.”

 

When they were kids, their parents had whispered about the two of them one day marrying, of how much easier it would be for them because they were friends, of what their marriage would do for their countries. Katie had always suspected that those whispers might one day come true, but had long ago stopped dreaming of that day. She hadn’t expected him to propose yesterday, but she had always known that it would one day happen.

 

Katie sighs, and runs her fingers through her hair. The door is still open, and her hair and clothes are wet. “Go sit down. I- I’ll go get you a towel or something.”

 

Keith looks around, and then sits down on the edge of her bed, as if afraid to make more of a mess. She nods, satisfied that he isn’t going to fall over, latches the door shut. Katie wonders how he’d even gotten to her balcony. Her room is three stories up, and his room is nearly halfway around the castle. He’d have to scale the side of a wall just to get to the same level as her room. She shakes her head; Keith is crazy, but she’d already known that. 

 

Katie grabs a towel from the shelf in her bedroom, and walks back. When he takes the towel from her, she notices the red streaking his knuckles, and the bruise that’s forming around his wrist in such a familiar hue. She takes the lamp from her desk and holds it up. 

 

Keith flinches at the light, and her eyes flit up to his face. A bruise is starting to form on his cheekbone. There’s a cut under his left eye. “When did you find the time to get into a fight?”

 

Keith shrugs, and rubs the towel over his hair, frizzing it up like a the fur of a startled cat. “On the way to my rooms. Lotor cornered me. He was mad, cause I messed shit up for him.”

 

Katie sits down on the bed beside him, and leans into his unhurt shoulder. He drapes the towel around her shoulders, and even though they’re both wet, something about the gesture has her feeling warm. “Messed what up? I mean, he gave me all of those gifts and things, which was like, way too much, but that was it.” Keith doesn’t say anything. Realization dawns on her. “He was planning to propose too. He knew that I wasn’t in any position to tell him no, and you- you- interrupted that.” She remembers Lotor being the cause for some of Keith’s bruises, remembers the way he’d acted so nice to her, until she’d questioned him for it. She remembers how icily he had looked at her then, and how her books had gone missing the next day. She can’t imagine having to actually marry him. “Am I right?”

 

Keith nods, and offers her a small smile. “You always are.” Katie feels her cheeks grow warm at the admission, but then she remembers the reason why she’d had doubts in accepting his proposal. He hadn’t thought she was right when she’d told him that her family was still alive.

 

“Except when I’m being selfish, right?” She replies, her voice scathing.

 

_ “You’re being selfish!” Keith says, his teeth gritted. His hands are curled into fists that shake, but do not leave his side. “Other people have families too, Pidge! You can’t just- just- withdraw from the war just to look for your own. You can’t do that!” _

 

_ “Yes I can!” Katie is the only functioning royal of her line. Although she rarely uses it, she has the power to control her army’s directives, and if she wants them to keep looking for her dad, and brother, then they’ll do it. She crosses her arms and looks away. Her face, her cheeks, her ears, everywhere feels hot, as if Keith’s gaze is setting her ablaze, as if she’s catching fire from within. “You can’t tell me what to do, Keith!” _

 

_ “No,” He says, crossing his arms as if to restrain them. “I can’t. If you can’t understand how selfish you’re being, I can’t make you. The alliance is the only thing keeping Zarkon-” _

 

_ “Your father.” Katie mutters as she turns to go. “He’s your father.” _

 

_ Keith grabs her wrist. “So what? We both know that blood doesn’t make a person. You’re smart. Smarter than your father.” His grip isn’t tight, and won’t leave a bruise, but she can’t escape it either, no matter how hard she tugs. His voice is even. “It’s not my fault your father was an idiot who got himself killed trying to fix this shit! You can’t blame anyone but him for this, Katie.” His gaze softens. “I know they’re your family. I get that. You love them. But sometimes being in charge, being who we are, it means we have to make some sacrifices. Can’t you make this one?” _

 

_ All Katie can think about is how he’d called her selfish. Selfish? For loving her family? She snatches her hand away, and leaves to disappear into her rooms just like her mother has disappeared into herself. _

 

Keith sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Yeah. I said a lot of things back then. So did you.”

 

“I-” Katie has so much to say, so much to argue about, because that  _ is not  _ an apology, but then she notices that he’s still looking at her, that the cut under his eye is still dripping.  An ugly trail leads down to his red tunic, now burgundy with the rain. It occurs to her that she should probably tend to his wounds, before Keith tries to on his own. 

 

“Whatever.” Katie huffs and brushes the towel away. “You’re going to get sick. From infection, or pneumonia. Or both.” She leans over the side of the bed, and pulls a box of Matt’s clothes out from underneath. She’d worn them for a while after he’d gone missing, and although she had forced herself out of it as she reentered the public eye, she’d still kept a bunch of them in her reach. It was like a promise almost, a promise that she’d never stop looking. She pulls out a pair of shorts, and a plain, brown shirt from the box and places it on the bed. “Go change into that. I’ll go get the first aid kit.”

 

She stands, and starts towards the door. Keith grabs her nightgown, halting her, and then lets go. It smacks against her skin with a quiet squish. “You should change too. You’re the queen now. You can’t get sick.” The water drips onto the floor quietly. A draft blows through her room and she shivers. His eyes are abnormally wide, as if they’d grown just to take her in. His gaze seems almost physical as is trails across her skin.

 

“I will,” Katie reassures. She opens the door, and pauses. The wood presses against her palm, cool and smooth. “When I get back. I‘ve still got things to say. We’ve still got things to discuss.”

 

“I know, Katie. I know.” He says, and then starts to pull off his shirt. She sees a sliver of pale, white skin rise above his pants, and she hurries to slam the door short before she can see anymore. 

 

Her cheeks are hot and tingling as she starts her trek down the hall to the guard station. The hall is dimly lit, and the sounds of the party, still raging on in the main hall, echo faintly against the sounds of the rain. Her footsteps echo on the stone floors and the wind whistles outside. The storm outside is bad, really bad, just like the day when she’d first met him. She can imagine the mess of mud that is now her garden, the way that it would mess her shoes up, and weigh her down, more than water alone could ever do. 

 

_ Katie’s shoes sink into the dirt, falling deeper and deeper with every step she takes. Her dress, once fluffy and lavender and pretty, is now soaked with water that slicks it to her skin; the hem drags against the mud, gaining weight with every step. She feels utterly and completely horrible.  _

 

_ She considers calling for help, but her brother is already inside, likely getting warmed by a nice, cozy fire, and her father is still with the carriage, directing the servants with their luggage. If she’d wanted help, she should’ve taken her father’s offer to walk her up to the door when she’d had the chance. Now it’s too late. There’s no one to call, even if she could swallow her pride enough to do so.  _

 

_ Katie continues forward, her gaze set on the open castle doors and their promise of food and warmth. If she can just get past that threshold, and into that hall, it’ll all be fine. The cobblestone path of her own home, the very one that she’d cursed for tripping her up with their uneven and slippery stones, seems inviting now, compared to this stupid, stupid muddy one. Katie takes another step, and slides, landing on her hands and knees. Any chance of saving her dress is gone now; not even the best laundress could get this much mud out of it. Before she’d left, her mother had told her not to wear it; had told her to wear her older dress and flat shoes on the journey there, but she’d wanted to look just as important and royal as her dad and brother did, and hadn’t listened. Katie feels her cheeks burn at being wrong. It feels like she’s just been slapped, and now she feels the urge to cry pricking at her eyes.  _

 

_ A boy stands before her, his black hair running into his eyes like ink. His tunic, a childish red colored thing, darkens with every raindrop. He offers her a hand.  _

 

_ Katie sniffs, and takes it, grateful for the help but unable to say it. He pulls her to her feet as easily as her dad might’ve, if she’d asked. She takes another step, and then another, but the mud can’t bear to be nice to her for long, and she slips again. This time they land together, and rather than let her sit there and wallow, he pulls her to her feet again, and they continue on.  _

 

_ Walking doesn’t seem so hard with the boy next to her, and they reach the hard stone steps together much sooner than she would’ve if she had’ve continued on her own. A small pile of towels is stacked by the door, but she stands there dumbly, shivering until the boy grabs one and drapes it around her shoulders. Her teeth chatter as she attempts to pat her hair dry, making it fluff and frizz up. He grabs one for himself, and holds it around him like a cape as their clothes grow puddles on the floor.  _

 

_ Her dress and boots feel like they’ve been weighed down with lead (she’d learned about the element earlier that week, about how in the old days they’d sewed it into the pockets of witches and sent them to swim), and although her legs feel too heavy to move, she shuffles over to the boy. He tenses, not like an animal about to strike, but like one unsure if it should run.  _

 

_ She reaches out, and brushes his dripping hair back away from his eyes.  _

_ His eyes, his eyes are unlike any she’s ever seen. They’re a purple so deep, and multifaceted that they look like amethysts sparkling in the light.  _

 

_ She steps back, startled, and trips over her drooping dress. “You’re Prince Keithian?” His eyes, his eyes, those purple eyes. Only one person in the castle has eyes like those. _

 

_ He shakes his head, and in a voice too small to befit someone as striking as he is, corrects her. “It’s just Keith.” _

 

_ “Keith?” She repeats quizzically, as if trying the word out on her tongue. The name seems too short, too simple, but somehow fits him all the same. She remembers her manners, and remembers to curtsey. “I’m Katie.” _

 

_ Keith looks her over, and grabs her hand. He tugs her along behind him just as easily as one would a kite, slowing down after he notices her tripping over her skirts. “You need to change, or else you’re gonna get a cold.” He pauses, and helps her bunch up an armful of the fabric and lift it into her arms. Her legs are cold still; her shorts underneath are wet too, but at least now she can walk. “C’mon.”  _

 

_ They walk in silence except for the squelching of their clothes and sound of water dripping down their neck and legs and down to the floor. Keith’s hand feels as hot as an ember against her skin; she squeezes his hand back, and lets him lead her deeper into the strange new castle. She doesn’t pay attention to where she’s going; with her eyes are all puffy from crying, and her legs still shaking beneath her, she has to keep her gaze focused on her legs to keep them from falling out beneath her, so it comes as a bit of a surprise when Keith finally stops. _

 

_ He closes the door behind them with a small click, and then drops her hand, pointing towards another door across from the one they’d just walked through. “There’s towels in there.” He pulls open a dresser beside his bed, and tosses another tunic, this one green like her castle’s flag, onto the bed.  “And you can change into that.”  _

 

_ Without waiting for her to leave, he kicks off his boots and begins to undress. _

 

_ She blinks. “My father doesn’t know where I am. He’s going to worry.” Everything had happened so fast- the getting stuck, meeting Keith, coming here- that she hadn’t even remembered that she was supposed to be waiting on him. “I’ve got to go back and tell him where I am.” _

 

_ Keith pulls his tunic over his head, and drops it onto the ground. It collapses into a soggy mess next to his boots. He pulls another one on, another red tunic, just as bright as the first had been. His shorts are still dripping water down his legs. “I’ll go tell him. You go change.” He points towards the tunic on the bed once more. He tugs off his pants, and slides on another pair, his skinny legs pale enough to rival her own. “Go. I don’t want you to get sick.” _

 

_ “Okay.” She nods, turning towards the bathroom. Through the open door, she can see her reflection in the mirror. Her hair is frizzy. Her eyes are puffy, and her nose is ugly and red. Her dress looks like something dragged from the depths of the garbage shoot. Katie doesn’t look like a princess at all. She realizes that she hasn’t thanked Keith at all during this whole horrible ordeal, and turns to do so, but the boy is already gone. If not for the trail on water on the floor, and the pile of soggy clothes, she might not have believed that he’d been there at all. _

 

It’s funny, she thinks, how the roles today have reversed. Back then, he’d been her savior, and now, what is she? Katie sighs. She needs to stop overthinking things. Right now, she’s just a friend who’s trying to stitch him up, just like she always does. 

 

It only takes a few minutes to grab the first aid kit from the guard booth and to walk back to her room, but by the time she gets back, Keith is slumped against the pole of her bedside, and snoring softly. She guesses that the day has taken it’s toll on him. Even  _ she’s _ starting to feel tired, and she normally doesn’t fall asleep until an hour before dawn. 

 

She quietly sets the kit on the bed, and then lowers Keith onto the comforters. The edge of the bed is still damp beneath him, but she figures that it’s more comfortable than leaning against a pole. Katie sighs, and opens the kit. Rags, alcohol, needle and thread, bandages. It’s not a lot, but she’s definitely worked with less when she’d fixed him up before. Keith had always been cautious of letting others know of the true nature of his family, and with how often he’d been hurt, it wasn’t often that he let her trek down to get medical supplies. 

 

Katie sits down beside him, and pours alcohol onto the rag. She gently rubs at the blood stain on his cheek, and marvels at how young he looks without that angry scowl of his. It’s hard to believe sometimes, that Keith is only a year older than she is. Of course, on other days, she’s twice as mature as he is. It always seems to shift, and the few times that they both manage to be either mature or child-like on the same day almost always results in trouble. 

 

She soaks the rag in the alcohol again, and pulls the collar of his shirt aside to dab at the cut hidden there. Tugging on the fabric must’ve hurt more than the alcohol did, because Keith grabs her hand, and tugs her down on the bed beside him. 

 

“It’s fine. ‘M fine. Just go to sleep and we can deal with it in the morning.” He says, grabbing a pillow from the top of the bed. “And go change.”

 

Katie rolls her eyes, but doesn’t argue. It is the middle of the night after all, and he’s not critically wounded. It can wait until morning. Even all of the questions that she still has. Everything will still be there in the morning. She sighs, and peels off her wet nightgown, exchanging it for another one. She crawls onto the bed beside him, and pulls the covers from underneath him. She falls asleep listening to the sound of his breathing, a familiar steady beat like the lulls of the tide. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please read and review! The next chapter may be a few days late, as I've got to work on another story for a zine I'm in, but hopefully, I'll have it done soon! Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to read more stories and drabbles like this, check out my tumblr: VoltronWordDump.


	3. Visiting her chambers

Katie wakes up with her back pressed against Keith’ chest. His arm is draped over her side, pulling her close as if she were a stuffed toy. She can feel the heat of his breath on the back of her neck, can feel how it stirs her hair, and brushes it aside, leaving her undeniably aware of his presence behind her. She hasn't shared a bed with anyone since she was a kid, and still believed that the loud rolls of thunder meant that the sky was falling in. She recalls being called a wild sleeper, but it seems like Keith is the one who moved the most during the night.

 

She shivers at the coolness of the air; The sheets are tangled in his legs, pulling most of them off of her in turn. 

 

Is this what it will be like, once they are married? Will they wake up every morning intertwined like this, like wood and fire? It’s a strange thought to linger upon, and she quickly brushes it aside as Keith stirs, rolling onto his back.  

 

She immediately misses the warmth he’d provided; without the blankets, or her fireplace on, her room is just as chilly as it is outside. 

 

“Damn.” Keith sits up, and leans back against the headboard. His shirt is wrinkled now, and blood has stained the front. “I’d meant to sneak back to my room before morning. It’ll look bad on both of us if someone sees me sneaking out of your room.”

 

“Yeah,” Katie pulls the covers back up to her chest, and turns onto her side, facing him. She’s not quite ready to get out of bed yet. Getting out of bed implies that she has a plan for how to deal with the bruised Galran Prince sitting in her bed, which she most definitely does not. “It would. But that sounds like a problem for future us to figure out.”

 

Keith’s whole body shakes with laughter, and then halts as the red stain on his shirt begins to grow. He sighs, and tugs his shirt away from where it’s been dried to his skin. 

 

“If he hadn’t caught me unaware he wouldn't’ve got me so bad.” He mutters as Katie brushes her blankets aside, and grabs the first aid kit from where it rests on the floor beside her. “The windows were open in that hall. I couldn't hear anything over the storm.”

 

“That was underhanded. More so than usual. “ She sets it down beside her, and then pulls out a bottle of alcohol, and a rag. The smell of alcohol reminds her of the night before, of the wine, and mead, and whiskey that had been served. “You must've had him feeling threatened, if he had to rely on tricks like that to get you.” Katie says, pulling his collar down so that she can see the cut.

 

The shirt won't stretch enough to give her good access to it, but she refuses to ask him to take it off. She doesn't like seeing him shirtless; it always leaves her flustered and unfocused, and feeling. 

 

“That’s glass-half-full way of looking at it.” Keith remarks. 

 

“It’s the only way of looking at it. He’s scared of you. Your fighting skills have surpassed his.”

 

Keith taps his chin pensively. “I've never really won against him, but now that I think about it, I  _ have _ started putting marks on him.” Katie tugs again, revealing the top part of the cut. She tries to press the rag against it, but he pushes her hand away. “You could've just asked y’know. I've got no problem taking my shirt off for you.” Keith rolls his eyes, and pulls his shirt off, tossing the ball of fabric at her face. 

 

Katie’s cheeks redden at his teasing. “You’ve been in King Lance’s company much too often.” She says, inspecting the cut. “It doesn't suit you.”

 

Keith scoffs mockingly. “Oh, but you like it. I can tell.”

 

The slash is about two inches long, and wider at the top than at the bottom. Keith’s already started to heal, although at a slower pace than a full-blooded Galra would, so she decides that with bandages, he’ll be fine. Sore for a bit, perhaps, but in no danger of dying. She surveys the rest of his chest as casually as she can manage for other wounds. A small cut, already scabbed, near his shoulder. A multitude of faded and fading scars decorates his abs, stopping just below his navel where a happy tail begins to peek out from his waistband.

 

“Katie?” Keith calls, and she blinks, realizing that she’d been staring. 

 

She presses the rag to the cut, and looks away. “Sorry,” She offers, as he winces at the sting. “If you let me do it last night, it wouldn't have hurt so much now.”

 

“Well at the time, sleep sounded more important.” He protests as she smooths the bandages onto his chest, fingers lingering at the edges as she presses them flat against his skin. Keith is warm, she realizes. She’d known that before, of course, but to actually have her skin touching his puts the observation first and foremost into her mind. 

 

She can feel his heart beating beneath her palm as she shifts it aside, can feel the gentle rhythm pumping his life force throughout his body. “You-”

 

“Your Majesty!” Shiro throws the doors open, igniting a whirlwind of papers from where they’d rested on her desk. The paper land all around them, some in puddles made from the night before. Katie drops her hand as Shiro continues, out of breath. “Your mother- it’s urgent. You must see to her at once.” 

 

“My mother? What- what’s going on? You didn't even knock.” Katie grabs her dressing gown from the dresser beside her bed, sliding it on inside out in her haste to cover herself. Her mother, she should be fine. Nothing has changed with her in weeks, no, months! Of all of her worries, she should be the least of them.“She’s fine, isn't she?”

 

Shiro’s steely gaze drifts over to Keith, offering him a curt nod of acknowledgement before looking back to Katie. He looks serious. More so than he’d been yesterday, before her coronation. “Put on a dressing gown.” He insists. “You must see her  _ now _ .”

 

Katie’s blood runs cold. The only reason that Shiro would burst in like this, the only reason why he would refuse to answer would be if her mother was at death’s door. She can't seem to get her legs to work now that she understands. The air feels too heavy. Her body is too weak to move against it. How is she supposed to go to her, when she’d been so angry at her only a day before? When the rest of her family is already gone?

 

Beside her, Keith slides off of the bed. He slips his hand into hers and squeezes, hard. “C’mon, Pidge. Get up. You don't have time to play around.”

 

Anger burns in her stomach at his words. She’s not playing around. She's _ scared.  _ Scared of her mother dying. Scared of being alone. The warmth of her anger pulls her out of whatever daze she was in, and she stands, her feet landing on the wet clothes piled beside the bed. 

 

Katie can’t seem to focus as she looks around for a pair of shoes. If she doesn’t wear them, she’ll hurt her feet. If she leaves with Shiro, if she goes to her mother, then this becomes real. Her mother is dying, and she’d give anything in the world for her not to.

 

Keith places a hand on her shoulder, cautious of standing too close under Shiro’s heavy gaze. “Do you want me to come with you? I can, uh, hold your hand or something.” 

 

Katie shakes her head. When she gets there, she is going to break. She can’t break down in front of him, not in front of Keith, who has always been so strong, so indestructible. “No. I want- I  _ have _ to go alone.”

 

Keith nods, and passes her a pair of shoes- something worn and soft that she suspects came from under her bed. She slips them on, and he places a hand on her shoulder awkwardly, as if about to divulge in her some kind of deep wisdom. “Okay. Go. I’ll see you later.”

  
  


Katie isn’t sure what to say, and Shiro runs out of patience. He grabs her wrist, tugging her away as fast as he dares. Keith closes the door behind them with a soft click.

 

Katie knows this wing well. It’s where her family lived, the ward where she’d spent most of her days as a child, and so she knows every detail of every stone she passes by on the way to her mother’s room. It's exactly four hundred and thirteen steps away from her own. There are two corners, and one curve. She passes by fourteen windows. Normally, it takes four minutes to walk there. Today it only takes two. She can’t recall a thing that she passes by, can’t make her eyes focus on anything.

 

Shiro doesn't relent with his manic pace until they get there. Even outside the door, she can smell the heavy scent of death leaking from her mother’s chambers. He pulls the handle, and pauses then, looking down at her with his mouth pressed into a thin line. For a moment, she thinks he’s going to say something, but then he shakes his head, and steps aside to let her through.

 

The medic stands by the side of her bed, his mask held in his hands. His face is young, but his eyes weathered, and although he is standing less than a foot away from her mother, he does not shy away from the smell she emancipates.

 

Katie steps forward cautiously, lingering at the edge of the bed. Her mother stares dreamily at the ceiling above, a slight smile resting on her lips.

 

“Mother?” She calls, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Mother are you-”

 

“Matt?” Her mother’s voice is bright, but raspy with disuse. Her head turns, and her eyes lock onto Katie. “Matt! You came back.” She smiles wider, causing her face to mar with wrinkles that Katie knows hadn't been there before.

 

“No, mom, it’s Katie. I'm Katie.” She says her name slowly, hoping that she’ll understand.

 

Her mother’s face scrunches up in confusion. Her hair, cut short in mourning has begun to grow out again. It reaches the edge of her chin now, choppy and tangled. “Matt? What are you talking about?” 

 

Her mother had pronounced Matt and her father dead after only a year of searching, and the cutting of her long locks had made it final. Who does she think died, if not Matt? Does she not see Katie’s hair spilling across her shoulders? 

 

Katie isn't sure how to respond; there are tears welling up in her eyes, and her throat feels thick with the urge to cry. 

 

“I heard that you did great at the coronation. I'm so proud of you.” Her mother says, smiling.

 

Katie wipes her eyes, and nods. “Yeah, I did.” 

 

Her mother reaches for her hand, and when Katie takes it, she can feel her bones poking through her skin. The honey-water that they’d used to keep her alive hasn’t been enough to keep her muscles from atrophying away, to keep her body functioning above a bare minimum. 

 

“Katie is getting married soon.” She says, but her mother does not respond. She looks up at the medic, but he only shrugs.

 

“She comes and goes. We call it the final push. A last bit of clarity before leaves for the Great Beyond.” The medic wrings his mask in his hands, and the leather squeaks as it rubs against itself. “I’d give her a week or so. Maybe less.”

 

A week. Seven days. A full month before the wedding will take place. 

 

Katie doesn't know how to feel. Her mother is dying, which means that she won’t be laying here, staring aimlessly like a portrait instead of a person. Maybe she’ll find relief in the afterlife, where ever that is. Relief from this incessant waiting for her family that never returns. Katie knows that she shouldn’t be thankful, she knows that it’s bad, that it’s horrible of her to find relief at losing her mother, but she is. She wants her to live again.

 

Katie pulls her hand away, and stands. “Is there anything we can do to make it easier for her?”

 

The medic pulls a vial from his pocket. It glows dimly against his hand, and pulses, as if a heart was beating inside. He hands it to her, and she turns it over, watching as the green liquid casts strange lights through her fingers. 

 

“What is it?”

 

“It’s an elixir. They call it Desolation.” 

 

“What does it do?”

 

“It’ll give her an hour of clarity, and then she will pass away peacefully.”

 

Katie looks over at her mother. Her face looks blank again, as if their conversation had been swept away like water down the drain. If she were to use this, she wouldn't have to suffer any longer. If she were to use this, Katie would be killing her own mother. 

 

She stuffs the vial into the pocket of her robe, and turns back towards the door. “Thank you.” She says. It feels like she’s being crushed under the weight of her decisions. She doesn’t want to be the one to make them. Katie doesn't want to even consider them, but she’s the queen now, and when has ruling ever been easy? 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who ended up getting ahead by an entire chapter this week? Yay! So this chapter wasn't late! I'm really appreciating the support you guys give by way of comments and reblogs (on tumblr). I really love how nice everyone is, and I really appreciate the comments. :) Thanks guys, and as always, r&r.


	4. There be trouble

Keith watches her unabashedly, hardly ever looking away, even when King Lance tries to start a conversation with him. She wishes that he’d have a little more decorum; with her being short and rude, and him staring at her like that, someone’s bound to figure out that something is wrong soon enough. She knows that if she’d just tell him that she was fine, that if she just said something,  _ anything,  _ that he’d leave it alone, but she can't. She can't find the words, she can’t stop fingering the vial of Desolation resting in the folds of her skirts, and she can't stop thinking about it, even for a single, measly dinner. 

 

“So,” Allura sets her fork down, her steak hardly touched. Katie isn't sure if she’s vegetarian or just doesn't like it, but she waves a server over nonetheless. “Are you and Keith having a little spat? You seemed rather friendly yesterday, and today, you seem,” She snaps her fingers as she comes across the right word. “Nervous. You seem nervous.”

 

Katie takes another bite of her steak, warm and juicy, and inherently familiar. It reminds her of days in Daibazzal, and of the dishes of still bleeding meat she had learned to like. “You’re perceptive.” She comments idly.

 

Allura smiles, and leans back as the servant replaces the steak with another serving of mashed roots. “I am. Would you like to speak of why you are nervous? I can offer a honest ear.”

 

Katie glances down into her lap. The green light spills from the vial and pokes through the gaps in her hand. It’s impossible to forget it, to forget that she has to choose. When she looks back to Allura, she is watching her expectantly, hopefully, and Katie remembers how she had asked her to be friends barely a day before. She can’t speak of this to anyone else. It's her burden, and hers alone to carry. 

 

“Keith and I used to be friends when we were children. Very close. The war was why we stopped talking, and then after he and Lotor separated into the New Daibazzal kingdoms, we fought over my choice to look for my family. It’s just…” She hesitates, understanding that this is the lesser of her problems, and then decides to continue on anyways. Who else is she supposed to tell this to? Who else would understand her plight? “It’s settling in. I'm going to marry  _ him _ .”

 

Allura settles back into her seat, satisfied with Katie’s honesty. “Yes, I suppose familiarity makes it strange, but it also makes it easier.” She glances at King Lance, sitting beside Keith. He’s finally managed to get Keith’s attention, and the two seem to be engrossed in conversation. “I suppose you’ve heard something of my relationship with Lance.”

 

Katie has. The two had grown up together, and had survived the Siege of Altea together. She recalls hearing rumors of their relationship recently, something or other about it being taboo due to their positions.

 

She nods.

 

“I’m supposed to marry someone else. It’s meant to be political in nature, meant to gain Altea a strong ally to help support the rebuilding and the war effort.”

 

“Who?”

 

Allura dabs her napkin at her mouth, and looks down the table. Lotor sits beside Prince Hunk, unaware of the dirty looks that he shoots him. He’s deeply engaged in some conversation with the general sitting beside him.

 

“Lotor was an option.” Her pink eyes latch into Katie's. “As was your brother.”

 

Katie hadn’t thought much of her brother’s love life; he’d never complained, or even talked casually about who he might one day marry. Obviously, her father had known, if Matt had been an option for her. Allura could’ve been her sister-in-law. Katie isn't sure what to do with this information, so she merely nods again. 

 

“I couldn't imagine myself with either of them, but Lance,” Allura glances over at him. He’s grinning, boasting perhaps, and Keith is rolling his eyes. “Lance has always been there for me. We survived the Siege together. He knows me so well, and well, we’ve got love.” Allura smiles. “And love is hard to find.”

 

Katie muses on Allura’s words. Keith is laughing now, at something Lance has done. He looks happy, young; like the boy she had first met so many years ago. “You think I could fall in love with him?”

 

“I think that you already love him.” Allura says, taking another sip of her wine. “I think that you may not yet understand how, or why you do, but you love him.”

 

Love. What exactly is love supposed to be anyways? Her love for her family manifests in her frenzy to find them, her loyalty even after everyone else considers them gone. Her love for Keith? She hadn't talked to him for four years after the war began, and when they had met again two years ago at his coronation, her father killed at the hands of his, they had fought, and not spoken again until now. He had no loyalty to his blood. She understood why, but it was still strange, still wrong. Does she love him? Does she hold loyalty to his blood?

 

The dinner is hard to focus on after their conversation. She finishes her food, and talks with Allura about lesser, more polite things as Lance occupies Keith, and somehow, she drinks her way through two full cups of wine before someone tells her servant to stop refilling her glass. The room around her is shifting, moving, and her tongue feels oddly loose. 

 

Allura frowns slightly as the other royals begin to shoot cautious glances their way. “Should I call for your guard? You might have had too much to drink.”

 

“I'm fine. I’m not drunk.” Katie pushes her chair away from the table, and stands, clutching the vial behind her back as if it were a cookie she’d stolen from the kitchen. She sways on her feet, and then straightens up. Perhaps she is a little tipsy. “I’m going back to my rooms.”

 

“That's probably for the best.” Allura mutters, waving Shiro over from his place on the wall. 

 

He steadies her, wrapping his arm around hers. “Let’s go, your majesty.”

 

She nods, and focuses on the floor in front of her, and on keeping herself from tripping over her skirts. It’s not until they are in the hall that she notices that Keith has tagged along with him. He walks beside her silently, gaze shifting between her and Shiro without comment.

 

“What’re you looking at me for?” Katie slurs, her shoes catching onto her dress. Shiro pauses to help her adjust her skirts before continuing down the hall. “You’re looking at me funny.”

 

Keith frowns, and sticks his hands into his pockets. His tunic is red again. It’s always red. “You’re drunk. I don't know why they served you such strong drinks.”

 

“It was from from the Coronation. From one of the lower Altean kingdoms. It was nice.” She hiccups. The Juniberry wine was strong, sure, but she could handle it. It’d been sweet, and had tasted much better than the usual mead of the court. “It was a gift.”

 

Keith sighs. “Of course it was.” 

 

“You're looking at me funny.” She says, not remembering receiving an answer. “Why?”

 

“I already said.” Keith says, irritated. His hair is starting to stick up like a startled cat. 

 

“You were looking at me before I was drunk.”

 

Keith looks to Shiro for help, but the guard merely shrugs, as if to say, ‘Sorry, can't help.’ He sighs again, more heavily than before. “About your mother. When you came back, you didn't tell me anything. You wouldn't say anything at all.” In a quieter, lower voice, he adds. “I was worried.”

 

Katie reaches out to lean against the wall, pulling away from Shiro as she waits for the bout of dizziness to pass. “Why would I tell you? I'm loyal to my blood. To my family.”

 

“Because I care for you.” He replies quietly.

 

Katie shakes her head. “But you’re not loyal to me. Not like I am to my family.”

 

“I love you, Katie. I want you to tell me these things.” He says, but the words wash over her. She hardly registers them.

 

Shiro tries to grab her arm, maybe to lead her away, maybe to warn her to quiet down. She pushes him away clumsily. Her head feels fuzzy, and she knows somewhere that she shouldn't be talking, but it’s like can’t, like the truth is refusing to stay inside. 

 

“I don’t trust you, Keith. You’re Zarkon’s son. You didn’t trust me. How could I trust you?” Katie stumbles again, and even in her drunken stupor, she realizes that she’s said something bad. Really bad. “Wait, I- nevermind. I-”

 

Keith tenses, and his mouth solidifies into a solemn line. “I knew you were still holding onto that. You blame me for it, don’t you? For your family?” He scoffs, and without waiting for a reply, turns back towards the dining hall. “Shiro, you should keep her away from the wine from now on. She has a tendency to show her vulgarity when she’s wet her tongue.”

 

Katie tries to walk after him, but Shiro easily lifts her into his arms. “Careful,” He murmurs. “He needs to cool off, and you need to dry out some before you two speak again.”

 

She pushes against his chest, attempting to free herself, but he hardly takes notice. 

 

“Careful,” He says again, as if calming down a wild animal. “Careful.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, read and review. I may not update for a bit, with school, and life and all, but I'll try my best. Thanks guys!


	5. And he came knocking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm having a lot of family issues, and life issues, and just everything issues. I tried to kill myself a few weeks ago, and I'm very grounded, and It's 2 a.m. right now, and I can't sleep. I hope you like the result of my insomnia, and please read and review. It helps to keep me writing.

Katie wakes up alone. Her room smells faintly of mildew and wet paper, and her head hurts.

 

She nurses her hangover in her room, alone, never opening the door, even when her maids come knocking. Not even when Shiro comes. She stays there for two days, and for those two days, she does nothing but sleep, hoping that her unconsciousness will provide some answer for her, while sparing her the brunt of the painful process.

 

Instead, she dreams.

 

Katie dreams of another girl, just like her in almost every way, who grew up on the northern edge of the kingdom, where her mother’s family still governs. She is no royal. She is no one important, but she feels important nonetheless. The grass is green there, and she has a garden where she grows Juniberries, and Honervia flowers between her rows of peas and cucumbers. Keith lives with her, even when their house is naught a house, and together they build a home together. He calls her Pidge, and she calls him her Prince, and they live together happily, until they grow old, and weak, and that is when she wakes up.

 

The warmth of the dream, coupled with the fear of dream self's impending death keeps her from falling asleep again, and so, regretfully, she sits up, and stretches, before heading into her bathroom.

 

She doesn’t bother with all of the special oils and salts and soaps that her maids usually use to perfume and sweeten the water, and instead just draws the water. It feels nice against her skin, and reminds her of her dream. It would be so much more simple if she and Keith were just them; no fancy roles, or titles or jobs to worry about. She wouldn’t have lost her father to his, and what happened last night wouldn’t have happened- _couldn’t_ have happened at all.

 

Katie wonders briefly what it means for him to consume her mind so readily, but then she hears a knock on her bathroom door, and her handmaidens come piling in to prepare her for the day. As they scrub her hair, and dry her skin, and lather her with lotions and oils, Katie thinks of her mother.

 

Truth be told, she has always been closer to her father and brother, but now that she is the only family she has left, that is tangible, she feels like she can’t ever let her go. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? She’s spent the last week with her head all jumbled up, and the mess she’d made that night is something that she has no idea how to handle. Her mother and father had actually loved each other before they’d gotten married; it was the reason why her father was one of the few reigning kings without a royal harem. Katie had always imagined marriage like that- loving and loyal and honest. How was she supposed to get that with Keith in just a few weeks? Less than that really, if she listens to her advisers, and pushes the wedding up.

 

She feels guilty about thinking about him so much. She feels horrible that she’s considered- no, at this point, it’s decided- to give the elixir to her mother just for an hour of advice, for an hour of pretending that she is just a lovesick little girl again. Katie ignores the ‘lovesick’ part, and focuses on her reflection in the mirror.

 

Her handmaidens have pulled her hair into a simple ponytail, and the dress that they’ve chosen is a dark, full green. The rich color makes her skin seem paler, and makes her gaze seem older and more refined. She looks like a queen now; a young one, but a queen nonetheless.

 

Katie decides to visit her mother first thing after leaving her suites, ignoring the advisers that buzz around her like flies, asking for her presence in court, for her approval of some project, for information on her mother’s status. There is no point in drawing it out, on pushing the hour farther and farther away. When she reaches the doors to her mother’s chambers, the crowd stops, and reluctantly goes quiet. Shiro glares at them until even the stragglers bleed away, and it’s just the two of them standing there in a ray of sun, like motes of dust caught in the air.

 

He studies her face, and she struggles to keep her upper lip steady. They’re in a stalemate. Neither of them wants to say it.

 

He breaks first.

 

Shiro sighs, and rubs is hand through his tuft of white hair. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’re probably still hungover, and upset, and this is a big decision to make.”

 

Katie knows. She knows that it’s a bad time, and a bad place, but when is there ever a good time for a barely eighteen year old girl to decide things like this? “I’m sure.” She lies, and Shiro steps aside, opening the doors to allow her into her mother’s room.

 

The room is filled with that same heavy scent of death, lightened by the open window. A ray of sun bleeds into the room, casting shadows through the bed's canopy. Katie sits on the edge of her mother’s bed, feeling afraid to disturb her, and studies her face.

 

Her skin is pale, and white, and her mouth is open slightly. A gentle rasp of breath lets hr know that she is still alive, but still, her mother looks like a corpse.

 

Katie gently pries open her mother’s lips, and pours the glimmering liquid inside. Her mother swallows on reflex, and all there is for her to do is wait.

 

Katie stares at the large, empty bed, and remembers how she had sought refuge there after those days when the pretty dresses, and rules and crowns were too much for her, and how her mother had been there for her then, how it felt like she’d always be there for her, no matter what.

 

_The dress, a fluffy, purple one, felt like a cage. The thing was pretty; all of the servant’s children thought so, but she’d prefer to be in pants. Some days were like this. Some days, she would hate the pretty hair, and clothes and title of ‘princess’ more than anything, and on those days, she often thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d like it better if she were a prince. Matt got to wear what he wanted. Matt got to walk in the town square. Matt had so much more than she did, and the promise of marriage didn't loom over his head as heavily as it did over hers._

 

_Her mother was already in bed when Katie tip-toed into the room. The covers were pooled in her lap, and a book was already in hand. She'd intended to come see her earlier, but the party had lasted longer than expected, and she'd been unable to escape, unlike her mother did._

 

_“Yes, Katie?” Her mother asked, setting her book down on the sheets beside her. Her attention was entirely on Katie, and it felt nice to know that she’d be heard._

 

_“I don’t want to be a princess anymore.” Katie jumped onto the bed, the sturdy frame not giving even a squeak in protest. “I want to be a prince.”_

 

_Her mother tsked in sympathy, and patted her back. “Well, how about you sit down properly, and tell me why, alright?’_

 

_Katie, still fuming, found that to be an acceptable response, and carefully made her way beside her mother to settle down and tell her._

 

And then later, when the war had started, and she and Keith had parted for what was supposed to be the last time, her mother had been there for her then too. Her father had been  consumed by rage, and refused to talk about the Galran Prince, even when she came to him crying. Her brother didn't understand why it hurt her so much, but had attempted to be there for her all the same. It had been her mother, in the end, who had convinced her that all would be okay.

 

_“Am I supposed to hate him?” Katie’s voice was hardly a whisper. She could hardly imagine it; Zarkon, and his wife reigning war on the whole world, and Keith, her best friend, caught up in the middle of it._

 

_“No, Pidgeon. You don’t have to. It’s his father’s war, not his.” Her mother says sternly, halting the steady stroking of the brush. “It’s not your war either.”_

 

_Katie sniffs, and wipes her nose with her sleeve. Her mother doesn’t even admonish her for it this time. Instead, she wraps her arms around her in a tight hug. “You can still love him, Katie. It’ll be hard, but if he really loves you back, and I think he does, then he’ll come back to you.”_

 

_Katie felt her cheeks redden. He was her best friend, not her lover, future of otherwise, but she doesn’t correct her either. Instead, feeling better, she smiles, and turns around once more, allowing her mother to continue her brushing._

 

_“Eighty-eight, eighty-nine-”_

 

“Katie?” Her mother calls, her voice cracked and dry. “Oh, Katie, it’s been so long.”

 

Katie snaps out of the memory so fast, it almost hurts. She glances at the clock- their final hour has begun, and then turns to her mother, smiling so hard, her cheeks hurt. “Hi mom.”

 

Her mother struggles to pull herself upright, and although she reaches forward to help, her mother refuses. She pauses, out of breath, and studies her daughter’s face. Katie wonders what she finds there for her gaze to be so sad, so withering.

 

“This isn’t going to last, is it?” Her mother asks as Katie leans into her embrace. “I feel like I’m made of wood. I can’t remember much.”

 

Katie nods. Her eyes hurt, and she closes them, trying not to cry. “No, it won’t.” She can feel her mother take a deep breath, and then steady herself, squeezing Katie all the while as if she can draw strength from her. “We’ve got one hour before-” She swallows, and her voice drops. “Before you pass away.”

 

Her mother sighs, but doesn’t look too surprised. She looks away from Katie, and then, seeming to pull herself together, looks back, smililng softly.

 

“Well, what have I missed?” Her hazel eyes flit up to the crown resting on her head. Katie had almost forgotten that it was there. “Besides you becoming Queen.”

 

Katie flushes. It’s strange, hearing her mom, the woman she’s always thought of as ‘The Queen’ call her that title instead. “I-uh, I- remember Keith?” Her mother pauses, as if trying to remember, and then nods.

 

“That Galran boy. The youngest, right? He looked human, didn’t he?.”

 

“We’re engaged. We’re to be married soon.” Katie can’t help but to say it formally, as if she were talking to an advisor instead of family. It was strange even before the fight, but now, it’s even worse. “And I need your advice.”

  
  


Her mother dies cradling her, one arm wrapped around her stomach like a stuffed doll. She doesn’t cry at the end, just falls asleep, and stops breathing.

 

Katie hardly even feels anything then. They’d cried together throughout the last half of her final hour and honestly, she doesn’t think that she has the capacity to feel anymore. She lays her mother onto her pillow, and covers her frozen face with a sheet. When she leaves, her eyes watery, not a single person disturbs her.

 

She can hardly think over the ruckus in her head: _She’s dead. Mom’s dead. They’re all dead._ But she recognizes what she has to do before she focuses on anything else.

 

Katie’s got to cut her hair, and find a mourning dress, and announce to the world that she is the last of her line, and then, and only then, will she have to find Keith, because oh boy, does her have some secrets to tell.


	6. The day in between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate all of the sympathetic words, guys. I'm not great, but I'm getting help, and writing has definitely helped too. I hope that you all enjoy this chapter and the quickness with which I wrote it. Please read and review!

Katie hasn’t worn this dress in years. It takes a moment for her to remember when the last time was; she’d refused to wear it at her father and brother’s ‘funeral’, she remembers, and there hasn’t been many funerals worth the time and travel until recently, but then she recalls it. Her grandmother. Her mother’s mother had died when she was sixteen, and it was then that she’d gotten it; a gift, from one of her mother’s old trunks.

 

It’s a heavy thing, made for the dead of winter, for long burials and hours stabbing at the frozen dirt, but she wears it anyways, ignoring the way sweat rolls underneath it and down her back. The lace collar and tight sleeves are details of her mother; she liked dainty things, handwoven things.  It was the most expensive dress she had owned as a girl, and now, is one of the oldest.  Was . Was the oldest thing her mother had owned. Keith stands beside her, not touching her, not looking at her, but noticing her all the same. She’s trying her best not to cry, but her eyes ache with the need to spill tears. 

 

Her hair brushes against her neck uncomfortably, and she swats it away, only for it to return moments later. She’d cut it with her own scissors, uncaring of how uneven she’d made it. She wonders if her mother would’ve fixed it when she was done, if she would’ve smoothed the tears away from her cheeks before fixing the mess she’s made. 

 

Katie turns to Keith, buries her face in his chest, and cries. That she’s mad at him, that they’re mad at each other doesn’t seem to matter to either of them, as he wraps an arm around her, and rubs her back. The other funeral attendees remain silent as the gravediggers finish their digging and pass out spades. 

 

Her mother is dead. Her mother is dead, and she killed her and now, Katie is all alone. She’s never felt this bad before, has never felt so alone. Loyalty is such an important value to her people; family is so important, and now look at her. She has neither. 

 

“It’s time to toss the dirt,” Keith whispers, brushing aside her hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Pidge, it’s time.”

 

Katie takes a deep, shaking breath, and steps back. Her tears aren’t even done drying on her cheeks as she pick up a spade, sticks it in the pile of consecrated Earth, and tosses it over her shoulder onto her mother’s casket. Her mother’s birthstone had been rose quartz, and the flakes mixed into the dirt glimmer like diamonds. She steps aside, and Keith throws a shovelful in too, a few crumbs of dirt landing on his new brown tunic.

 

“Do you want to go back to your rooms?” He asks, and she shakes her head. No, she can’t. She has to stay here, to bear witness until the very end. It was her father’s job before her, and would’ve been her brothers. It was her mom’s duty last time, when she’d refused to come, and now, it is just her. It is her duty now. “Okay,” Keith murmurs. “I’ll stay with you.”

 

In the end, seven of them stay. Shiro steps forward to stand on her other side as the rest of the crowd leaves, and doesn’t move except to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder now and then. His usual monochrome green uniform has been replaced with a mourning brown one, to symbolize the return of her mother’s body to the earth; it is a shade lighter than her own garment. Allura and Lance join their little crowd soon after, their hands interlocked behind the privacy of Allura’s long, pink sleeves. Allura whispers phrases in her native Altean, only a few of which she actually understands. Katie catches a few ‘release you’s before she stops listening. Hunk and Shay are the only ones beside Keith and Shiro who dare to touch her. Hunk offers her a warm, and soft hug, and Shay brushes her cheeks with chaste kisses.

 

It is not until midday that the grave is filed, and the tree planted above it. Katie waters it with her tears, and then allows Keith to lead her back into the castle. Someone leads her to a bath, and exchanges her dress for a thin frock, and tucks her into bed. She thinks that she sleeps, but she is not sure. She does not remember much of that day. 

 

The next morning, it is easier. Not better, not alleviated, but easier. Katie is able to get out of bed, and make her way to the court without breaking into tears, and is able to function; to give verdicts, and approve plans and serve her kingdom, at least until one of her advisers comes to her with a question about Keith.

 

“Have you given King Keith a token yet? And have you chosen which weapon you would like to use in the Duel of affection?” The adviser asks, pen poised in his hand, ready to strike down her answers. 

 

“A token?” She repeats. Katie recalls reading something or other about it the night of their engagement, but she hadn’t spent much time looking into it. She racks her memory for a response.

 

“You’ll need to pick something that encompasses your ‘soul’, and is dear enough to you to make it hard to give up. I’d suggest a necklace or ring of your brother or fathers. Perhaps use the metal of your mother’s ring to forge a new one.”

 

Katie’s eyes water, and her hands clench on the armrests of her throne as she tries to convince herself not to cry.

 

The adviser steps back, and lowers his head. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

 

Katie closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. She can use one of her brother’s things. Keith would like a ring, maybe. She can get it inlaid with rubies to match his favorite color. If she doesn't think about her mother, if she pretends that her funeral wasn't just yesterday, then she’ll be able to answer him.

 

“I’ll deal with it.” Katie says tersely. “Court is done for the day.”

 

She spots a few disgruntled faces, but in most, she sees sympathy. She doesn't want their sympathy.

 

“And someone call Keith from the courtyard.” Katie orders. There are a lot of people in that room, and it takes time for them to flow away, like water down a drain.

 

When the court is once again empty, a slight chill running through the room, Keith creeps through the oak doors, his fancy clothes exchanged for the plain tunics and pants used by his guard for training. The black fabric is slicked against his skin like they were painted on, and she tries not to notice how the highlight the muscles of his stomach and chest.

 

“You called?” He asks, his tone not rude, but cold.

 

“I did,” She confirms, leaning on her arm. The crown slides to a rest, lopsided on her head. “I need to ask you something.”

 

“Then ask.”

 

“Was Zarkon truly your father?”

 

Her words hang in the air heavily. Keith’s eyes widen, and he stalks forward, not speaking until he is standing directly in front of her.

 

“How’d you know?” He questions, his voice desperate. “No one knows. How did you?”

 

Katie leans forward, her indifferent act dropped. “My mother told me. There is no way for you to look so human, unless you were mixed with it. And your father, he loved Honerva too much to take up a concubine,” She grabs his hand, curled into a fist, and smooths it open. “But his brother had a fiancé, before he was killed.”

 

Keith shifts, and his mouth solidifies into that line he wears whenever he is thinking. He shakes his head. “Zarkon killed my father, but loved him enough to take me in. Honerva never took to me, but Zarkon liked me well enough.”

 

His confirmation brings tears to her eyes. If he knew, if he knew all this time that he wasn't Zarkon’s son, that murder wasn't flowing through his veins, why didn't he tell her? Katie had blamed him all those years, had distrusted him for what his father had done, and it had all been a lie. She had blamed his blood, when his loyalty had never been tied to it in the first place.

 

“Your uncle killed my father.” Katie whispers, brushing his hair away from his eyes. “And you’ve not held loyalty to him. Your blood is not his blood.”

 

“I couldn't tell you,” He says, and his breath, spiced like cinnamon, blows into her face. “I couldn't tell anyone. My soldiers would've abandoned me; Lotor would've wrenched my kingdom from me, and slaughtered me without opposition. And I had never thought that it would matter so much to you.”

 

He’s right, she realizes. It might have been beaten into her from the time that she learned how to read; that blood, and loyalty and whom you came from was important, more so than anything else, but really, did it? Keith was her friend, her best friend. He had listened to her theories, and heard her rant about her books and studies, and had protected her before he even knew how. She loved him.  She loves  him.  Because he’s her prince. 

 

“You're right.” Katie says, looping her arms around his neck. “It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.” He leans forward and she tilts her head and then their lips meet; his, hot and scalding and impossibly soft, and hers, damp and slightly salty from her tears.

 

And in that moment, nothing exists except for them. There is no death, no marriage, no kingdom. There is only Keith.

 


	7. Warfare for beginners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a long-ass time to write, mostly cause I didn't know where I wanted this story to go. As a result, I ended up with this chapter, and this weird little one shot thing that I may of may not post (involves drunken dancing). Anyways, I had to low-key draw a map for this story, cause geography kept messing me up. I'm really happy with the chapter, as it reveals more of the culture and background of this world, and also has some allusions to the Voltron tv show and a couple of inside jokes. Please remember to review! Comments are life! Thanks guys!

“The Galra have attacked,” Shiro says. His mouth is pressed into a grim line as he reads the report. The paper is damp from the rain, and the ink seems smeared upon the paper, as if whoever wrote it sent it off before it was fully dry. “They’ve crossed through our Southern border with an Navy of thirteen thousand men, a platoon of monsters amongst them. Scouts have sent word that there is another division heading for our South-Eastern border, having crossed through the Olkari forests unopposed.”

 

Katie’s head is still foggy with sleep, and she feels like she’s missing something painfully obvious. She rubs her eyes, and meets his solemn gaze. She thinks she sees fear there, something that she has never seen in him since that day when he’d returned home with half an arm, her brother and father gone. “What does that mean?”

 

Shiro lowers the scroll, and sighs. “The Galra are coming for Terra.”

 

It takes time, a stupid, annoyingly long time to get dressed in a proper manner, and to walk to the councilroom. Her generals are already seated, most of them men twice her height, wearing scars like Shiro’s bared across their bodies and souls. She feels small, standing amongst them. What can she possibly contribute to these veterans when war is something she's only ever read about, has only felt the rippling repercussions of?

 

She takes her seat at the head of the table. As if waiting for her audience, her generals break into argument as soon as she is properly seated. She recognizes a few faces from the few council meetings she had sat in with her father, but the war has aged them so that some of them are hardly recognizable as the men she knew before. Amongst them is a man perhaps ten years her senior, who looks closer to her father’s age than to her own. He unrolls a map across the table, and jabs his finger at the southernmost edge. 

 

“Send more troops to the southern border. Most of our agriculture is located there. We can’t afford to lose it if we’re ever to have a chance of winning this godforsaken war.”

 

Another man, one with a curly and tangled beard pushes his hand away, and pokes at the east.  “The east is heavily populated, more so than the south. They’ll have no trouble reaching the capital if allowed to cross through unopposed.”

 

“But the obligation is to the people-” Another man says, lips pulled back into a snarl.

 

“No, General Ozark. You are merely thinking of your own family!”  General Ozark leans across the table as if to grab the other man, only to be pulled back by the younger man who had aged too soon.

 

Katie feels like she’s paying witness to a fight amongst wolves, tearing at each other over a bloodied carcass. Rationally, she knows that they all mean well, but it seems as if none of them have any idea of what Zarkon is after. He’s never had reason to attack Terra, not with it bordered by it’s allies of the Olkari and Altea. Briefly, she wonders if her engagement to Keith was the final straw, giving him reason to invade. After all, most if not all of the royals are gathered in her capital, and it would be easy to kill them all, decimating his opposition, if given the chance. 

 

She feels lost still. It’s late, and she’s not well versed in war strategy. Out of anyone, Keith would have a better idea of what to do, balancing her cautious personality with his more rash, and hands on one. Katie holds up a hand, and the table slowly falls quiet. “Call for Prince Keithian. His guidance will be crucial in deciphering Zarkon’s plan.”

 

The attendants standing by the door nod, and slip outside. 

 

Katie grabs a piece of paper from the center of the table, and a pencil. If she’s going to solve this, she needs to take notes. “I was told that there would be a platoon of Zarkon’s witch’s monsters amongst his army. What are our chances against them? How many of our soliders have fought Zarkon’s monsters and survived?” 

 

One of the generals, a middle aged man with a scar running through his eye, leans forward. “Thirteen.” He tosses a pile of drawings in front of her, and waits for her to look through them. Corpses, torn apart like ragdolls surround a slumped monster, it’s blood pooling into black puddles around the ankles of the victor, a man covered in blood. Beneath that is another drawing, one of a man with his back drawn facing the illustrator. He leans against a wall, and in front of him rests a ring of human heads, each face wearing an expression of pure agony. Another shows a man hugging the body of another, his companion torn in half at the waist as the monster lays dying in the background. Katie pushes them away, and meets the General’s piercing gaze. “And most of them walked away as broken men.”

 

Katie’s blood runs cold. The corpses, the bodies, the pure sense of agony in their victims. It seems so hopeless, so horrible, and sad. How can she possibly send more men to face them, knowing of their fate. No. No, she can't let it get to her. She still has to try. She takes a deep breath, and her voice hardly shakes.

 

“Call for those thirteen in the morning. They will be in charge of instructing the troops- whatever you can spare- in how to survive against the witch’s creations.” As Katie says it, she feels more confident. She always did beat Matt at chess, didn't she? Planning for war is similar, isn't it? Maybe they do have a chance after all.

 

Keith steps into the room, a crimson tunic draped over a pair of black pants. She wonders if he was even sleeping with how put together he looks. While her hair is still ruffled from sleep, and many of the Generals at her table still have traces of sleep written across their faces, Keith looks just as ready for a fight as ever. He looks around the table, and when none of the Generals offer him their seat, he walks over to stand beside her, standing on the side of her chair opposite her guard.

 

“You called?” His voice, warm and quiet causes a smile to pull at the edges of her mouth, despite the dire situation. 

 

“Fill him in.” Katie orders, and the cacophonous racket of the war table begins again. 

 

Katie leans back in her seat, allowing herself to relax and just  _ think _ . Terra is hundreds of miles away from the warfront, and has the Olkarian forests and marshes between them, which are not easy to cross without an indigenous guide. Of course, their allies would never betray them, so that’s not even an option. The only way that the Galra would be able to launch their navy would be through the Southern coastline of the Balmera. If they’ve truly managed to regain control of part of Balmera, that would mean that nearly half of the continent is under Galra control or influence. If the Galra had attacked at a different time, then maybe they’d have better odds, but most of Terra’s troops have been deployed at the Altean and Balmeran warfronts. Katie isn't sure how they can hold off the Galra until support can arrive, especially not with odds like this.

 

The room lulls as their explanations end. One of them, Commander Wolfbane, Katie remembers, looks at Keith with real malice, and says, “The Galra are savages; men could not destroy our armies with such glee and fevor in such a short time.”

 

Keith’s hands curl into fists by his side, though his expression stays impressively cool. “Perhaps it is  _ your  _ troops which are the problem. Have you not trained them well? If you are facing ‘savages’ and failing, then your men are not  _ men _ enough.”

 

“Why you- quiznacking Galran scum!” Wolfbane howls. He stands, his chair sliding back to hit the wall. “Say that again, and face my blade!”

 

Katie narrows her eyes. For a general to disrespect her fiance right in front of her, on the eve of a war wherein his cooperation is essential for their success, is essentially traitorous, and she won’t have it. 

 

“Enough.” She says, her voice hard as steel.

 

“But Princess-”

 

“ _ Queen.  _ I am your Queen, Wolfbane, and I will not have you disrespect the man I am to marry. Leave.” She points at the door as if he were a bad dog, and obediently, he follows. He smolders at Keith as he slams the door behind him. Keith smirks as the generals look back to her, surprised at her audacity. “And Prince Keithian, watch your tone. My Generals deserve the respect that their duty calls for.”

 

Keith nods curtly, and straightens up. Katie isn't sure, but it seems like some of those at her table straighten up too, and when she meets their gazes again, they are filled with more respect than before.

 

“Now,” Katie meets Keith’s purple gaze, unmistakably Galra. “Prince Keithian, what is your take on the matter? What advice might you have regarding Zarkon’s tactics? Do you have any idea what he is after?”

 

He leans over the map sprawled over the table, and thinks. His fingers, fine and strong, trace the raised sections marking the approach of Zarkon’s army carefully, as if committing it to memory. 

 

“The monsters are your greatest threat. Take them down first. While it won’t affect morale much, it will cause them to have to pause to recalibrate their efforts. As for his motives, I have no idea. My father is an evil man. His goal has always been domination; that is all I can tell you.”

 

Katie can feel protests rising around the table. She holds up a finger to quiet them. “Yes, but how?”

 

“The knife that I gave you- it’s made of a metal called ‘Hagania’- that kind of metal cuts through their skin like nothing else. That, and heat.” Keith suggests, hand pressing against his side as if searching for the blade he had given to her. “Although I doubt that you'll have the resources to produce weapons like that, considering that the metal is only found in Daibazzal.”

 

“That sounds like a challenge.” Katie grins. The heat aspect can be taken from her prosthetic design from Shiro, and as for the metal issue, well, she's got some ideas. Looking back to her assorted generals, she dips her head and stands. “That's all for tonight. I will confer with our blacksmiths on the weapon designs tomorrow. I’d like the rest of you to focus on deployment tactics and on carefully dispensing our remaining supplies. We’ll reconvene in the morning.”

 

As Katie stands, Keith trails after her, waiting until they leave the sight of her underlings before walking beside her.

 

“I see that the Alteans aren't the only people who are Anti- Galra.” Keith says, making a grab for her hand. Katie swats it away, and shakes her head. “What?” He asks, petulant.

 

“Nothing.” She mutters.

 

Keith sighs, then falls silent. Her hall is nearly empty at the hour; Shiro is asleep, and most of her guards have been redeployed as general castle guards or for the war effort. It’s eerie, seeing the castle so empty. She offers her hand to him as they reach her hall, and as if second nature, she finds herself intertwining her fingers with Keith’s. His hand is warm like a coal, and she finds that his warmth draws her petty annoyances away as easily as leaves are drawn into the wind. 

 

When they reach her door, Keith turns to leave. She hooks her fingers and pulls him back. “Will you- will you stay with me? Just for tonight?” She can’t stand the thought of sleeping alone tonight, not when she knows that those images, that that pain is waiting for her when she closes her eyes.

 

Keith’s expression is blank, unreadable, and for a moment, she's afraid that he’ll refuse. A corner of his mouth lifts up, and he gives her a small smile. “Okay.”

 

Katie closes and locks the door behind them, propping a chair beneath the handle to prevent any intrusions. Keith stands there, watching her warily, as if unsure of what to do. 

 

She turns her back to him, and reaches back to push away her hair, before remembering that she’s cut it. “Untie me?” 

 

Keith’s fingers brush against the back of her neck as he pulls the strings loose, releasing her from the confines of her dress. When it falls away, she’s wearing nothing but a thin, white frock, meant to spare her skin from the friction of her dress. Although the fabric is thin, thin enough to chill her skin, and to leave no part of her body hidden, she doesn’t feel embarressed, or ashamed. She watches him sheepishly as he surveys her. 

 

Keith blinks, and then smiles softly, his eyes glimmering faintly, like Amethysts caught in candlelight. “You should dress like this more often.” He teases as he pulls off his tunic, and tosses it to the floor.

 

Katie can’t help herself. She can blame it on her medical curiosity. She can say that she was merely checking on how his wounds have healed. Whatever she excuses it by, she can’t deny that she’s looking at his chest, and that the sight of it, muscled and hard from years of physical activity, has her flushed. 

 

“As should you.” 

 

Katie blows out the lamp on her desk, and in near darkness, finds her way to her bed. Keith slips in beside her, and she scoots against him, her chest pressed against his. He drapes the covers over the two of them, and in the darkness, she feels herself growing bold. She tilts her head up, and knots her fingers in his hair, pulling him down until their lips meet. He tastes like sleep, she thinks, as he rolls over, pushing her into the mattress. One of his hands hesitates over her chest before she takes it, and presses it against her. 

 

“Can you feel me?” She whispers. “I can feel you.”

 

Keith nods, breathless. “I feel you.”

 

He leans forward, and kisses her again, and again, hands trailing over her skin like sparks from a fire, leaving her skin ablaze with something unidentifiable, something hot and yearning. Katie isn’t much of a hands-on learner, no, but there is no other way she would ever want to learn him. She maps the planes of his body with trembling hands, only stopping when her fingers press against a bulge in his pants. 

 

“Keith?” She whispers, imploring, questioning, unsure.

 

He shakes his head, and the edges of his hair tickle her face. “Not today. Not yet.”

 

Keith rolls aside, and pulls the covers up, offering her spot beside him once more. Katie is left wanting something, wanting  _ more,  _ despite not knowing what. She doesn’t like that she doesn’t know. If there’s anything that she hates with all her heart, it has to be ignorance; and because of that, she doesn’t protest, and resumes her position pressed against him, and tries her best to fall back asleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Two steps forward, one step back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hope you all like this chapter, and comment, etc. Read carefully, because the first person to guess who tried to assainate Shay wins a thousand word fanfic of their specifications! Also, if you'll look to the story stats at the top of the page, you'll notice that the series that this story is is is now called Kidge Alternate Universe's, and that there is a new story in this series! The new story is a Kidge Mermaid AU, so if you like those, come check it out. As always, thanks for your support, and for reading and reviewing!

“Katie, I’m  _ not _ going to do this with you until you put all of this on.” Hunk says impatiently, thrusting the thick rubber gloves, and ugly goggles at her once more. “Safety is important.” He reminds her.

 

Katie hates the way the gloves hang around her wrists, twice her size. They compromise her sense of touch and the finesse of fingers; plus, they make her hands all sweaty. But one look at Hunk tells her that he’s not gonna budge on the subject. With a sigh, she snaps the goggles around her head, undoubtedly mussing her hair up, and pulls the gloves on. “Happy?”

 

Hunk nods. “Very.”

 

The process that they are about to do is not one that Katie is familiar with. Hunk is more used to the chemical sciences than she is, which is why she called for his help. Shay had proudly told her that he used to make and smuggle weapons for use against the Galra, and with his help, Katie is sure that they can figure out how to use her single, little Haganian knife to create weapons to defeat the Witch’s monsters. 

 

Hunk hands her a beaker full of something bubbling and motions to her to pour it into the pot as he grabs an unlabeled bag of blue powder. “Okay, so, I was thinking that we could coat their swords in a solution, rather than make the swords entirely out of Hagaina. It’s a process jewelers usually use to clean their stuff after they get damaged by fire, but it can also be used to electroplate another metal onto something.”

 

When Hunk had explained his idea earlier, he had been rushed, and his words had slurred together in his haste to say them. She hadn’t understood what he’d meant earlier, but now it’s all too clear. “We can make a thousand Hagainan swords with just one blade.”

 

Hunk grins. “Exactly.”

 

Katie pulls the blade from its sheath, hidden in the folds of her dress. The handle is smooth and worn, but stone embedded in its handle still shines. “Will it damage this one?”

 

Hunk grabs a plain, unornamented dagger from the midst of his chemicals, and gingerly drops it into the liquid. “It shouldn’t.”

 

“But you don’t know for sure.”

 

“Is there anything that we can ever truly be sure of?”

 

Love, she thinks, she has always been sure of her love, for her family, for her friends, and now for Keith. Of course, such a sentiment is not scientifically grounded, and of no use to the conversation, so she does not bring it up.

 

Carefully, she holds the handle of the knife between two fingers and then dips it into the boiling mixture. The blue-tinted liquid hisses, and darkens to a purple dark enough to be mistaken for black. She and Hunk exchange a look, and then with a pair of copper tongs, lifts the test blade from the mixture. 

 

The blade, where once was silver, is now the same purple shade as Keith’s knife. She holds the two knives up side by side, and cannot find a difference in the hue of their metals. “It worked.” She says, her voice hardly a whisper. She looks up at Hunk, and the two of them grin like drunkards. “We did it. It worked!”

 

Hunk scoops her up into a hug, lifting her off the ground effortlessly. “Oh, by the gods, Katie. It worked. We have a chance!” Noticing belatedly that he’s lifted her clean off of her feet, he puts her back down, his cheeks darkening with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

 

Katie hugs him again, her arms wrapping around him,  but unable to make a complete circle. “It’s fine, Hunk. I’m just glad that we were together for this discovery.”

 

Hunk’s stomach growls, and he sets the knives down on the table, careful to cover them with a burlap cloth to prevent wandering eyes from seeing it. “Uh, I know that this is a great discovery and all; a truly miraculous one honestly. It could help turn the tides of many battles, if not the whole war, but um, can we break for lunch before spilling the news?”

 

Katie smothers her giggles with her hand. “Of course, Prince Hunk. We most certainly deserve it.”

 

They lock the laboratory's door behind them, leaving their discovery on their work table, and set off to the kitchens. Normally, Katie would just send a servant to bring whatever the cook’s decided on, but Hunk had suggested making a meal of their own. She isn’t sure if he’d suggested it because he actually enjoys cooking, or if it was because he was scared of being poisoned. Either way, Katie did not protest, and together, they entered the castle’s monstrous kitchens. 

 

“Hmm,” Hunk says, leaning into the kitchen’s icebox. Cooling milks for dinner are intermixed with cheeses, and leftover dishes meant for the servant’s own meals. He grabs a pitcher of milk, and sets it on the counter next to the stove. “Where are your spices?”

 

One of the cook’s steps forward from the peripheral of the kitchens, and points to a cabinet. Hunk nods his thanks and starts pulling out tubs of herbs and spices that Katie cannot name. He slices off a few thin pieces from some freshly salted meats, and grabs two tubers from a basket hanging above.

 

“If you could dice those,” He gestures to the tubers. “I’ll start on our main course.”

 

Katie grabs a knife from the cutting block, and starts to cut. “Which is?”

 

Hunk turns, and holds a finger to his lips. “A surprise.”

 

“I dunno if I like surprises all that much.” Katie jokes. “So you’d better make it a good one.”

 

Hunk’s hands grab and toss spices so quickly that she can’t tell where he’s grabbing from, yet he still manages to flash her a smile. “You have not tasted the fruits of my labors yet, but you should know that I won Shay’s heart through her stomach.”

 

“I thought it was due to your smuggling of weapons.”

 

“Well,” Hunk tosses the meats in the spices, and kneads them, as if preparing bread. “That was what caught her attention, not her heart. If that was all it took, she’d have been in love and married long ago.”

 

“It had to have been more than just your cooking. I’d heard that you crashed her ball.” Katie smiles to herself. “It was like a fairy-tale, they said.”

 

“I had an invitation, thank you very much. They just assumed I’d snuck in because I didn’t have any fancy clothes,” He lowers his voice. “And I was the only one there with mud on my shoes, and a shooter in my holster.”

 

“And she just happened to see you, and fell in love with you on the spot?” Katie teases. Hunk is not a traditionally handsome man, at least not by Terran standards, but in Balmera, he would definitely catch the eye. 

 

Hunk shrugs, and a bloom of spices puffs up and settles on the front of his yellow tunic. “Perhaps. But I like to think that my stopping of an assassination attempt was what sealed the deal.”

 

Katie pauses. She had not heard this part in the court’s gossip. “Assassination attempt?”

 

Hunk nods gravely. “A Galran spy appeared out of nowhere, and attempted to kill m’lady. She had some powers of witchcraft, as when I shot her, she disappeared as suddenly as she came. Soon after, Shay invited me to her court, and everytime I visited, I brought her food of my own cooking, and we walked her canyons together, and soon enough, we were betrothed.”

 

“You very much have lived a fairy-tale then.” Katie scoops the diced tubers into a bowl, and hands it to Hunk. He starts a fire in the stove, and tosses the the tubers and some oil into a pot, before setting it over it. “I am glad that your story has been so happy thus far.”

 

Hunk messes with the meat a bit more, and then sets it in a tray above the fire. “Yes, well,” He pokes at it some more, only stopping when it begins to bleed. “She’s had two miscarriages thus far, and we hope that this one will make it to full term, but our medics say it is not likely.”

 

Katie hadn’t even considered the problems that an interspecies relationship might pose. Terran biology is simple enough: the male inserts into the female, and boom! Pregnancy. But the Balmerans? She had never studied much of reproductive biology, preferring instead to focus on the life-saving medical sciences,  but even she knows that the Balmeran’s have a different reproductive systems. They’d lived underground for much of the evolutionary process; their gods had formed them to live in the caves. Fleetingly, she wonders if Keith takes after his Galra side, or his human side more, and wonders if they’ll be compatible.

 

Katie places a comforting hand on Hunk’s arm. “I wish you both this best of luck with your child. I am sorry that you have had to suffer such pain.”

 

Her hand leaves behind the pale, lavender juices of the tuber on his tunic, and he laughs hollowly at the sight. “Let us eat,” He says, pulling the boiling pot and tray of meat off of the fire. “And talk of less depressing things.”

 

Katie nods, and in silence, they eat their meal.

 

Hunk’s cooking had lived up to his bragging, and as a result, she had begged for seconds, and then thirds. Her stomach is full when she leaves, and they are both content. 

 

They fall into silence comfortably, only speaking when one of them comes up with a new idea for their process, or a comment on a previously spoken idea. Katie likes him, and realizes that she will miss him when he goes back home. 

 

When they arrive at their lab, it is immediately obvious that something is amiss. The door has been left ajar, and part of the lock is broken, smushed into itself as if it were as soft as a slice of bread.

 

“Oh, no.” She says under her breath, lifting her skirts into a tight bundle. She dashes into the room, almost sliding on the liquid spread across the floor. Hunk catches her last minute, and pulls her back. She scans the room desperately for the knives, but the table has been swept clean. Most of the equipment is broken on the floor, but several of the bags of chemicals are gone, and the burlap that they’d covered the knives with is gone as well. “No.” Her voice weakens into a whine. They were so close. So close, and now it’s all gone. Her legs cannot hold her, and fall beneath her weight, beneath the weight of their failure. She sobs. “No, it’s not fair. It’s not…” 

 

Hunk pulls her into another hug, this one more solemn, more careful than their celebratory one, and says, “It’s alright. We can try again. We will  _ always _ try again.”

 

Even if it hadn’t been their armies’ victories on the line, that was her knife that’d been stolen, her token, and that is something that cannot be replaced. She has to tell Keith about it, has to beg for his forgiveness that she’d let it be stolen, and has to hope that the presentation of her own token will be enough to make up for it.

 

Hunk grabs a mop and broom, and pulls his gloves and goggles on again. “Go ahead, Katie. I can handle this on my own.”

 

“I could send a servant to-”

 

“It’s dangerous, all of these chemicals mixing together. It is a job for a chemist, and a job that I am fine doing on my own.”

 

Katie wants to protest; a Prince should not have to clean a mess such as this on his own, but Hunk seems content, armed with a broom and mop, and so, she closes the door behind her, and sets off for her rooms. 

 

Loss weighs heavily in the pit of her stomach, and for a moment, she considers how much easier life would be if she just...left. If she could convince Keith to leave with her, they could run to the shores of Luxia lake, build a nice little shack on its shores, and just… exist. She thinks of the dream she’d had, of the simplicity of it all. No. She can’t have that. She was born for this country, and her country has given it’s all to support her, and her family. To abandon it for her own selfish desires is beyond despicable. 

 

Katie is so lost in her own thoughts that she doesn’t notice the man standing in front of her until she nearly runs into him.

 

“Careful, my dear. Wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours with a clumsy fall, now would we?” Prince Lotor steadies her, one hand wrapped around her wrist like a vice. She pulls her hand back, and then remembering her manner, dips her head. Prince Lotor waits until she stands straight again before doing the same. “Might I walk you to your chambers, your Majesty? I don’t believe we’ve had much of a chance to talk since your engagement.” The words roll off of his tongue like honey, and she feels the distinct itch on the back of her neck that this is a trap, and that she is the fly, heading into it willingly.

 

Still, she is a queen, and to be rude to him is unsightly.

 

“Of course, Prince Lotor. I would love the company.” Katie smiles like she’s been trained to, and she is sure that he can’t see the insincerity. 

 

He offers her his arm, and together they walk into her wing of the castle. She doesn’t question how he seems to know the way without her guidance.

 

“So, how are the preparations going along? A little bird told me that you and that Balmeran Prince were working on weapons of some sort to defeat the witch’s abominations.”

 

“A little bird?”

 

Lotor sighs, as if annoyed to be explaining it to her, as if she should already know. “Two of my generals were on your war council. They explained the plans to us all this morning.”

 

Katie blushes. She doesn’t know what she was thinking. “Yes, yes, of course. My apologies.”

 

“No matter,” Prince Lotor drawls. “I’m aware that you have one of the brightest minds of our time. Did you come up with anything?”

 

Katie is suddenly filled with the urge to spill it all to him, to this almost stranger. She chokes on her words for a moment, and then sighs, the feeling of loss coming back to her in full force. “I- yes, we- me, and Hunk, we figured out a way to make knives to use against them, but while we were away from the lab, someone broke in, and-” She sniffs, and blinks hard, willing back her angry tears. “They stole it. All of it. I believe that Hunk still has a paper with our lab routine on it, but my knife, and everything else. It’s gone.”

 

Prince Lotor gives her a piteous look, and sighs sorrowfully. “That is horrid news. Who here would dare to sabotage this plan that might save us all?” His other hand brushes against his side, lifting up his tunic just enough to reveal the knife strapped to his side. “Is there anything I might do to help alleviate these setbacks?”

 

Katie is tempted to tell him no, but even she understands that now is not a time to deny help, no matter it’s source. Besides, Prince Lotor has been nothing but pleasant to her, despite her disruption of his plans. While he might have been a bastard to his brother (or, cousin, she mentally corrects), he has been nothing but an ally to her and her country.

 

“Yes, actually. Your knife, it would do wonders to expedite our research.” 

 

Prince Lotor raises an eyebrow in surprise, but pulls it from it’s holster, and hands it to her, blade facing him. “Of course, your majesty. Whatever you require.” 

 

They stop before her room door, and he bows, before taking his leave, leaving Katie wondering if Prince Lotor is really so bad after all. 


	9. An extravanganda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R.I.P. guys. Things are getting kind of...extra. This is probs my favorite chapter so far. As Always, please read and review, and check out the other stories in this series! We've got a Kidge Mermaid au, and a Genie au. If those aren't your jam feel free to suggest an AU for me to write. Thanks for reading!

Katie pulls the drawstring tighter, and then takes a deep, burning breath. She exhales, and knocks on his door. 

 

While he had originally been in the guest’s rooms across the castle, she’d had him moved to Matt’s rooms, partially because all of the sneaking between their rooms was growing tiresome, and partially because Shiro’d had enough of the sudden, startling knocks on her bedroom window and resulting security breaches. 

 

She hears some rustling inside; a thud as something falls onto the floor. And then the door unlocks, and Keith appears in the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, and a towel around his shoulders. His hair drips rivulets of water down his face, and onto his chest, tracing translucent trails down his scarred abdomen and onto the waistband of his pants. 

 

“Yes? Um, I mean, you want to come in?” He steps aside awkwardly, and she passes by him just as ungainly.

 

The room had been cleared of Matt’s stuff before he’d moved in, except for his bookshelf, and the furniture, which remains the same. It’s strange being inside of it without seeing Matt’s scrolls discarded all around the floor, his staff leaning against the far wall, perhaps some clothes strewn around, but not in, his laundry basket. She forces herself to keep eye contact with Keith as she sits on the edge of his bed, and plays with the small, drawstring bag. Its weight is miniscule, but comforting, as she passes it softly from hand to hand.

 

“So, I, uh. I have some stuff to tell you, and,”  _ Keep eye contact, keep eye contact, keep eye contact.  _ “Will you  _ please  _ put on a shirt? You’re- that’s- it’s distracting!”

 

Keith snickers, but grabs a shirt off of the floor, and pulls it on. It’s black, and tight and only slightly better than him being half-naked, but she supposes that she’ll have to take what she can get. “So, is there a particular reason you came over, or…?”

 

Katie fingers the bag once more, aggravating a tiny tear, and causing it to grow. “Your knife, I,” Her voice wavers and she has to pause to collect herself before it all comes spilling out. “Hunk and I found a way to make weapons against the witch, and we had to use your knife. When we came back from lunch, our lab was destroyed, and your knife, it was gone.” Keith’s face takes on that halted, stony expression he uses to hide his emotions during court, but she can tell by the tilt of his mouth that he has something to say. She holds up a finger. “There’s more.”

 

“More?” He asks flatly. “What else is there?”

 

“Your brother, I mean, Prince Lotor, he offered his assistance, and,” She can practically sense Keith holding his breath. “I took it. He offered his knife so that we could continue the experiments and I couldn’t let the chance pass me by. I’m sorry.”

 

Keith’s fists ball up, clench, and sit like rocks beside him. He takes a deep, wavering breath, and then meets her gaze. “What are you sorry for? Losing your token, or for letting my  _ brother  _ find a way in?”

 

“I-” She feels a flash of anger wash through her, and then leave, as fast as it came. She doesn’t deserve to be angry with him about this. It’s her fault. “I’m more sorry about the token; it meant a lot, to both of us. I’m sorry that I had to accept his help, but it wasn’t as if I knew someone was going to rob us!” She adds, unable to prevent herself from defending herself just a little. 

 

Keith takes another ragged breath, and then the anger shifts. “It was Lotor’s doing; you shouldn’t trust him, Katie.”

 

Katie sighs a quiet sigh of relief. She doesn’t like being the object of his fury. “I don’t have a choice. The war will be here for us soon, and I don’t have the time to be picky about where help comes from.”

 

He harrumphs. 

 

She holds the bag out as a peace offering. “I know that this is normally done in public, but this is- it’s important to me.”

 

Keith’s takes it from her gingerly, and pulls it open, dumping it’s contents onto his palm. It’s a ring, made from the rims of Matt’s glasses, and set with a ruby from one of her mother’s brooches. He holds it up in the light, and inspects it, and then slides it onto his ring finger. 

 

“Thank you,” He says, his voice raw. He smiles, just a tiny bit, and pulls her into a one-armed hug. “And be careful, alright?”

 

Katie nods, and leaves his quarters in a much better mood than she’d entered with. 

 

It lasts until dinner.

 

The main hall bustles with excitement as she and Keith walk in, sleep still evident in the curve of her eyes and slope of her shoulders. They’d been talking, that much she remembers, something about a shared childhood memory, a favorite food, a forlorn wish. Then a guard was knocking on the door, warning them of the quickly approaching dinner. Neither of them remembered falling asleep, but the warm, fuzzy feeling it’d left inside of her lingers on.

 

Katie takes her seat at the edge of the table, Keith to her right, and they wait for the servants to pile in carrying trays of mouthwatering food and wine. Allura sits to her left, one chair away; a frown lingers on her face, partially melted away by the wine, already half empty. 

 

“Who’s sitting there?” Katie whispers. Keith shrugs. 

 

A moment later, after everyone else has been seated, Prince Lotor slinks in. He wears a dark purple undersuit with faintly shimmering embroidery. It hugs his lithe body tightly, his modesty only protected by the tunic worn half-heartedly on top of it, and the royal blue cloak tossed atop it all. He takes the empty seat with a smile, giving a polite nod to Keith as a way of hello.

 

“Hello, Queen Kathryn. How goes your project? Have you made up for your losses?” Prince Lotor asks in an amicable tone. 

 

Katie decides not to bring up his tardiness; she’s certainly done worse, and despite Keith’s glowering beside her, she responds with a similarly friendly attitude. “We’re still behind a bit, with all of our supplies having been destroyed, but yes. We should be able to present our findings to our munitions officers in a day or two.”

 

Prince Lotor grins. The servants begin to travel down the table, pouring glimmering, pink wine into their goblets. He swirls his cup delicately, and takes a small sip. “That is wonderful news! I am so happy that I could be of assistance; this development will surely help in our fight against Zarkon’s forces.”

 

His excitement seems too much, too overdone, but not by enough for her to feel suspect. Instead, it leaves her merely feeling uneasy. Does Prince Lotor really hate his father enough to feel that happy about his impending demise? Katie can’t recall any of this hate and disgust for him when they were children. True, as a child, she hadn’t been looking for it, but still. Thinking back on it should’ve revealed some insight. Instead, all that she can recall is a need for his father’s attention and approval. 

 

“Yes, it is.” Katie replies.

 

Keith picks the knife off of his napkin and spins it between his fingers. Lance watches him for a moment, and then tries a clumsy imitation.

 

A server begins to place slices of meat onto their plates; well done for most of the Terrans, and just barely cooked for the Galrans. The Alteans receive a strange gelatinous scoop of something else as a replacement. Katie saws at her food carefully, but doesn’t eat more than a few bites. The mystery of Lotor’s behavior has stolen away her appetite. 

 

Allura sighs dramatically as Prince Lotor tries to draw her into further conversation about the war effort, but even if Katie felt that same comfortable comradie she had felt the day before, she wouldn’t be able to tell him much. Her adaptation of Shiro’s prosthetic into further weapon use isn’t fleshed out beyond a vague sketch. Eventually, he lets the conversation die out, and that end of the table finishes their food in an uncomfortable silence. 

 

The second course is served before she finishes even a third of her meat; a chilled soup with mint leaves floating on its surface. Keith dips a finger in, and sucks it off. The corners of his mouth perk up almost imperceptibly.

 

“Strawberry?” 

 

Katie nods. “I know it’s your favorite, so I asked the kitchen to include it in our meal.”

 

“Is this your way of smoothing things over from earlier?”

 

Katie takes a delicate sip. It’s not her kind of thing, but she can see why Keith likes it. “Maybe it is. Or maybe I just decided to be nice for once.”

 

Allura downs her bowl faster than Katie had counted for, leaving a milk-moustache on her lip. Lance snickers, and Keith smothers a snort as she turns between the two of them suspicously. “What? What is it?”

 

Katie tries not to laugh as well; Allura is her friend, and it’s not nice to tease. She pantomimes a mustache with her finger. “You have a- right above your-”

 

Lance finally leans over, tilting her her with his finger. He licks it off of her lip, and then smoothly turns it into a kiss. When he settles back into his chair, both of them are blushing. 

 

“So, Allura,” Prince Lotor drawls, the stem of his wine glass held between two, claw tipped fingers. “How goes the repopulation effort? After my father’s decimation of the capital, I heard that your armies numbers dropped to an all time low. It must be mighty hard to spare Terra the armies she needs when you have so few troops.”

 

Allura straightens up, and the jovial mood disappears. Her mouth straightens into a hard line, and Katie can see the slant of Lance’s arm increase as they hold hands under the table. “Do not presume familiarity,  _ Prince  _ Lotor. You  _ will  _ call me by my title.”

 

“Apologies, Empress.” Prince Lotor ducks his head in way of apology. “But if you would, please, answer the question.”

 

“She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to, jerkwad!” Lance says, his voice just a little too loud. Down the table, conversations begin to dim so that they can overhear their words better. 

 

Allura holds up a hand before Lance can say anything further. “No, no. It’s fine, Lance. I’ll answer.” 

 

Lotor smiles smugly. 

 

“Yes, it is true that Zarkon’s genocide decreased our population by a major number, but you forget: Altea is a strong country, and we will not let evil overcome us. Our armies may not be the same size as before, but it is rapidly increasing in size as our countrymen and women train and join our ranks.” Her pink eyes glimmer coldly. “Does that answer your question adequetely?”

 

“Yes, your majesty. I appreciate your candor.” Prince Lotor responds, not at all upset about being shut down so savagely. 

 

Katie is confused. 

 

To what purpose would he talk to her like that for? What use does he have for the information she’d revealed in her anger? She can’t think of anything; as their ally, Lotor has no reason to anger another in the anti-Zarkon alliance. 

 

Keith slams his cup down on the table just a little too hard to be casual. “Dear brother,” The words roll off of his tongue like boulders: strong, and heavy, and harsh. “For what reason would you have to ask such a private question? That is nearly as rude as me asking why you have one of your generals send a letter off with an unmarked bird every night.”

 

If Keith’s accusation offends him, Prince Lotor doesn’t show it. 

 

“Why, I do have a country to run, brother. Not all that I have to say is safe to be sent so carelessly.” His tone implies that he knows that Keith suspects him of more; it’s almost daring in it’s casualness. “We can’t all frolick and play around whilst staying in Terra.”

 

Katie makes a note to ask Keith about the bird thing later. For now, she has to stop this, before they make more of a spectacle of themselves than they already have. “Enough.” Her voice is neither particularly loud or harsh, but the three of them pause in their arguing nonetheless. “Can we just dine in peace? We have enough fighting with the war; there is no need to instigate it here, among our allies and friends.”

 

Allura huffs, “That’s fair. Although I feel that I must mention that the instigating was not caused by my words.” She takes a long sip of her wine. “However, our … squabbling has rather ruined my appetite. I think I’ll be taking my leave.”

 

Katie feels bad that she hadn’t supported her friend more, but what was she supposed to do? Prince Lotor is her ally too, and his help has possibly swayed the result of the war. She can’t piss him off anymore than she can piss off Allura. “That’s...fair.” Allura offers her an apologetic smile, and stalks out of the room. 

 

Lance narrows his eyes. “Katie is more diplomatic than I am, so just know this: you disrespect Empress Allura like that again, and you’ll have to deal with more than just some nasty words.” He shoves his chair away from the table with a loud screech, and stalks after her. 

 

Katie curses the gods for inheriting this foolishness, and hopes to herself that Keith won’t make this spectacle any worse than it already is. 

 

Of course, knowing Keith, that’s probably too much to ask.

 

Keith stands, and knocks his glass of wine away with an echoing clatter. The pink liquid spills towards Lotor, who stops its trail with a well placed napkin. “I don’t trust you. She does,” He jabs a thumb at her. “But I do not. I know that you’re planning something, and I’ll figure it out. I promise you that.”

 

Keith leaves in a flurry of red, like a flash of fire sparked by a raging storm, only to come back seconds later to grab both a bottle of wine and a pitcher of the soup from a dumbfounded servent. The rest of the table stares at them, and gossips in muted whispers. Prince Lotor stabs a spear of his meat, and leans back in his chair leisurely. “My brother is quite a spectacle, isn’t he?” He drawls, mouth spread in an amused grin. 


	10. An interlude and a transition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...season five came out today. I'm not watching til tomorrow cause I'm having a party to watch it with friends. I decided to post this today, before everything changes and I end up distracted with new plot bunnies. As usual, pls read and review!

“Did you really finish all of that wine by yourself?” Katie’s brush gets caught on a knot in Keith’s hair, and she has to pause to untangle it with her fingers. It’s damp still from his after dinner training session, and yields easily to her deft and nimble fingers. 

 

Keith snorts. “I’m not a lightweight like you are. I wasn’t even buzzed by the end of it.” He flips through the pages of the book lazily, careful not to rip the thin pages as he scours their contents. He pauses on a page illustrating a design for a short sword, but eventually moves on to the next page. 

 

“That was still a lot of wine.” Katie mutters, as she brushes his hair back from his face, and tries to wrangle it into a ponytail. She wraps it up with a red ribbon, but his bangs resist and wrestle free only a moment later. She sighs, and ties the ribbon back around her wrist. “If you can’t think of anything, I’ve got a few ideas. A staff or a short sword or something”

 

Keith huffs. “Those aren’t your style. And besides, Shiro said he’d choreograph it, so you don’t have to worry about actually fighting me. No one actually expects you to fight a real Duel of affection.”

 

“I’d still like to try.” Katie says petulantly. She drops her brush on the bed beside her, and scoots beside him. He turns the page again, and then makes to turn it another time, but she stops him. The current page shows a multitude of hand to hand weapons, much smaller and less gaudy than the swords he had tried to persuade her of earlier. She wonders how she could improve upon the design of those brass knuckles. She could perhaps add an expandable aspect or, something similar to Shiro’s heat inducer. “And besides, not fighting it for real would feel like cheating.”

 

“You’ve never had a day of training in your life.” Keith sets the book aside and pounces on her, knocking her back onto the bed. He traps her between his arms, cages her in between the bed and his body, burning against her like a coal. “You sure you can handle me in a real fight?”

 

Katie leans up slightly, and parts her lips, brushing them against his just ever so slightly. He leans forward as if to consume her, and she pushes him over and onto his back, managing to pin him beneath her in a single fluid movement. She smirks. “Pretty sure.”

 

While it’s true that Katie never got the true military training that Keith or her brother got, she had learned more than enough to protect herself on her own from Shiro. He had insisted that she learn basic self-defense maneuvers when he’d first starting guarding her, and not long after, she had found a real interest in learning how to handle weapons as well. She was passably good with a longbow, and did well enough with a sword or staff, but honestly? She liked the weapons of her own design the best.

 

“Cheater,” Keith grumbles as he sits up, and presses a gentle kiss to her lips. “I guess I should-”

 

Someone knocks on the door loudly, startling them both. Katie gives a small yelp, and Keith tries to smother his own shriek of surprise. They laugh at the ridiculousness of it, and separate so that Keith can answer the door.

 

He trips over some clothes discarded on the floor- her gown, and his tunic and coat, and stumbles to a stop just before he runs into the door. When he opens it, no one is there. Katie feels a rush of relief, having realized how visible and well, undressed she is, but that is quickly replaced with confusion.

 

“Maybe they decided it was too late for a social call, and decided to leave?” 

 

Keith stoops down and grabs something off of the floor before coming back inside. “Or maybe they like to avoid confrontation.” He waves a white, stiff envelope in front of her. “‘To Queen Katherine of Terra, at Prince Keith’s bedside.’” He reads, and Katie’s blood runs cold. 

 

No one knows where she is. So why would they deliver a letter addressed to her to Keith’s room?

 

She snatches it from his grip and tears the heavy parchment open, breaking the unmarked wax seal. 

 

“‘If you are as wise as they say you are, you will not look a gift horse in the mouth. Every moment that you procrastinate and set aside the inevitable end, more lives are unnecessarily lost. The war itself will be lost unless you give in.  _ Umperuatur lescoaatis el-’” _

 

“Stop!” Keith snatches the letter from her before she can finish reading the unfamiliar words. He tears the parchment between his fingers and drops them into the cup of water by his bedside. “Those words, that was a spell, a curse. I think it’s a curse. Someone tried to curse you.”

 

“A curse?”

 

Keith nods solemnly as he locks the door and sets a chair under the doorknob. “Haggar is not the only practitioner of the dark arts. I imagine that there are more than a few hidden within our courts. Considering the amount of people milling at the capital lately, it’s really more of a given.”

 

Someone wants to curse her? Katie is no idiot. Her father suffered assassination attempts for years. She’d witnessed a few first hand. Still, the idea that the political spotlight has shifted to her is somewhat shocking. And more than that, it scares her.

 

“Would you,” Katie swallows thickly as goosebumps prick at her arms. “Would you mind if I stayed here for the night?”

 

“Of course.” Keith pulls a sword from its scabbard and leans it against the wall beside his side of the bed, just within reach. “If anyone else tries to pull something, they’ll have my sword to answer to.”

 

Katie pushes her uneasiness away and smiles. “You’ve been wanting to stab something since dinner.”

 

“Perhaps.” Keith admits as he dims his lantern. “Though I will try my best to hold off and play nice with my dear brother.” He drawls sarcastically.

 

Katie snickers and burrows into the bed like a bunny, pressing her back to his chest. He wears a tight, black shirt this time, and a pair of loose shorts, but even so, she imagines that she can feel the heat of his soul through the many layers separating them. She falls asleep nestled there; safe in Keith’s arms. 

 


	11. The start of the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting close to the end now! I can finally move on to other stories! Closure is coming! In the meantime, please remember to read and review, and if you like my work, feel free to follow my tumblr for more stuff @voltronworddump.

Katie remembers little of the few days she had spent in her father’s court. She’d always brought a book along, or a pen and paper, and busied herself with her own thoughts until her father released her. She supposes that that should have been enough to clue her in to the fact that open court days are boring as hell.

 

She resists the urge to slump back in her chair as two frequent visitors, two noble families with lands bordering each other, enter the throne room. They kneel and present presents- a basket of fruit from the Mordello family, and Olive oil from the Castellos. 

 

“What ails you?”

 

The Mordello man stands and crosses his arms. “The Castellos stole a bucket from our land and won’t return it.”

 

The Castello representative, a stern looking middle-aged woman, tsks. “We have no bucket of theirs. It’s all a ruse to try and take more of our land from us. The Mordello’s are a lying, scheming bunch and-”

 

The Mordello talks over her. “They took our bucket. Who else would steal a bucket right off our borders? Who else-”

`

“They’ve done this before. They’ve-”

 

“-weasely little common blooded-”

 

“-stupid argument and-”

 

Katie hold up a finger, and pinches her brow. “Enough. I will personally see to it that the Mordello’s get a new bucket, no,  _ two  _ new buckets for their trouble. In return, the two of you must shake hands and apologieze for acting so,” Childish, stupid, annoying, but she can’t exactly say any of those things to their faces, can she? “Thoughtlessly.”

 

The two frown at each other, though the Castello seems less put out than the Mordello. They shake hands, and Katie whispers to a servant to give the guy some buckets. 

 

They were her tenth case of the day, most of which were about as petty, or even more so than their argument. Although mostly nobles come to her for her judgment on matter between families, or to tell her of their family’s sacrifices towards the war, sometimes others will stumble in. She’d had at least one case that day brought to her by the wife of a veteran who was crippled by the war. She’s asked for better housing, for help rebuilding their lives, and that was the one case that day she’d been glad to say yes to. 

The announcer calls out the names of her next visitors- two advisors, her own, and Keith’s. The two step inside, comically dissimular; Ulaz is tall, classically Galran with his lilac skin and yellow eyes. He towers over her own advisor, who shrinks away from him, as if his mere shadow could harm him. 

 

“You’ve been putting it off for a while now,” Her advisor speaks first, voice all matter-of-fact, eyes trained on the armful of papers in his hand. He glances up at her once, to see if she’s still listening, and then continues. “We’ll have the more support from the citizens of New Daibazzal once you two are fully married; our reports say that many of them do not see a reason to help Terra so extensively without that vital link.”

 

“But there’s a war going on. People can’t truly expect us to drop everything for a wedding, can they? Zarkon’s forces are heading right our way!” Pidge protests. She’s gotten used to the weight of her crown, and barely notices it anymore, but now, it seems to sit almost oppressively on her head.

 

Ulaz steps around him. “The Galra people don’t even consider you engaged yet.”

 

“But the token exchange-”

 

Ulaz shakes his head. “That was essentially just asking to court you. For it to be recognized as a legitimate proposal, you have to duel.”

 

Katie isn’t sure when they’ll have time for one; she’d like to get some practice in before a duel, needs to plan out the where’s and when’s and why’s. But she also knows that if she keeps pushing it off, it’ll never happen at all. Her mind flashes to the previous night, when someone had sent her that cursed letter, and she wonders: was that what they were referring to? Was she not getting married fast enough?

 

“Is three o’clock today fast soon enough?”

 

Ulaz blinks, and flicks his ears. “I-uh, yes, your majesty. I shall go make the preparations.” He bows, and leaves, her own advisor following after him in a daze, undoubtedly in shock from her lack of a fight.

 

Katie leans her head into the palm of her hand and sighs a long, drawn out sigh. The day has already got her feeling tired as hell, and she’s only seen half of her court and ministers. Already, she misses Keith’s company. 

 

“Your majesty,” One of the servants bows before her, and then straightens up. “Prince Lotor awaits your audience. He apologizes for coming unannounced but wishes to speak with you.”

 

Katie really needs to talk to Keith about this, needs to get an outfit and her weapon ready, but she can't just turn Lotor away either. “Send him in. Push my other meetings til tomorrow. If they can't wait, ask for written correspondence, and I will review it at my earliest convenience.”

 

The servant nods and leaves. 

 

There is a moment of silence, of sweet silence, and then the door creaks open. Lotor slinks inside on heeled boots, a quiet grin resting on his lips. He reminds her of the old stories, of the tales her father used to tell her before bed. Pikart, and the Elf king, with his pointed, galra-like ears and his wings so delicately thin that you can barely see them except for when they catch the light. In that story, Pikart gets lost in a fog of confusion by the Elf King, who leaves the story unscathed. 

 

“Your Majesty.” He bows, low and dramatic. His hair falls around his face angelically as he straightens up. “I come to you with an offer.”

 

“An offer?” She leans forward carefully, cautiously. She remembers Pikart’s downfall, how he had taken advice by the Elf king which led to his demise; if Lotor is the Elf King, then she will try her best to avoid Pikart’s fate. Still, she is hesitant. He did help her with her research after all. “What kind of offer?”

 

“You are aware of your losses in the south, are you not? They say that thirty-thousand men died there. My father is quite intent on taking Terra as his own.” Lotor paces the carpet leading to her throne leisurely, as if he were discussing what colors to wear for her wedding rather than war casualties. “I’d suppose that it’s for your resources; the fertile earth, and unpoisoned water and the like.”

 

Katie dreams of their bodies bent and broken by the monsters employed by Zarkon’s witch. She has not forgotten what this war has wrought on her people. “I am aware of what my people have lost, and of what Zarkon wishes from us. What is your point?”

 

“Then I offer you this: I am my father’s only heir, and as such, he has never been able to hate me fully. If I were to return to his lands with your hand in marriage, then he would accept your people as his own, and your people would suffer no more. Nothing would have to change, besides your betrothed, and you could leave this war behind once and for all.”

 

Katie’s head is hot and her thoughts are all jumbled together. She thinks that she understands, but did he really just ask that? It feels hard to think, hard to piece her thoughts together. “Wait, you’re saying- you’re asking-”

 

Lotor kneels and holds his knife out. “Marry me, and this war will end.”

  
  



	12. What we have started

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a long time to write. I had too many ideas in the interim. Idk which to focus on... Anyways, hope you all enjoy, and remember to read and review!

“No.” The word slips from her mouth, unbound. They both look shocked at the severity of her answer. For a moment, Katie considers recalling it, and asking for time to think on it; War has ravaged her land, and as the ruling monarch, it is her duty- but no. She is already engaged to the man she loves, and that too is for her kingdom. She can be selfish, just this once. She has been selfless her entire life. “No,” She says again, louder. “Keith and I, we're engaged. I love him.”

 

Prince Lotor stands, and sheathes his knife in his belt. When did he even get it back? His expression is guarded, but in the tightness of his eyes, the slant of his mouth, Katie can tell that he is pissed. Although he and Keith are merely cousins, they still share some of the same mannerisms. “You would sacrifice your country for such a fickle thing as love?” He asks in disbelief.

 

“I…” Katie hesitates. Her crown droops heavily on her brow, reminding her of the weight on her shoulders. “Yes.”

 

“Then I hope your resolve never wavers,” Prince Lotor turns, his cape rippling behind him like a storm brewing in the distance. His tone is not cruel, is not threatening. It is as if he is merely stating fact. “Because you have wrought hell upon yourself.”

 

The servants step forward to open the doors for him, but he slips by before they can, leaving them to stand dumbly as the doors fall shut with a loud bang.

 

Katie's chest feels tight, like someone is squeezing her lungs with their clawed hands.

 

“Your majesty?” Her advisor kneels before her throne. “It is time.”

 

Time for what? But then the morning before Lotor rushes back to her. Their engagement, their finalization is in a mere half an hour. She peers outside the window, and sure enough,she can see crowds bustling out in the courtyard.

 

“Yes, I know.” She lies, and then forces herself to stand, and to follow her advisor out into the hallways where a guard awaits to lead her back to her rooms. She just has to get through this duel, and then she can tell Keith, can tell her friends of Lotor, and the problem that he might become.

 

The walk to her room is silent, even inside of her own head. Whereas her anxieties usually manifest as a swarm of thoughts like bees inside of her head, now it is quiet, as if they have all been calmed with a burst of smoke. She feels empty. She feels confused.

 

Her maids have set a simple jumpsuit on her bed, an embroidered version of the one she had used to train in.l, when she was younger and still had the time. Leaves and vines pattern the side, leading up to her neck where it wraps around like a choker. She slips it on in, and then grabs her weapon from her desk. It is not sleek, or ornate, as the weapons suggested to her had been. She can see the weld lines, left unsanded, and the dents in the metal from her first fumbling attempts. It is ugly, but functional, and enough to leave her feeling a lingering sense of pride.

 

A guard collects her, and leads her out to the courtyard. Stands for spectators have been set up on the peripherals, while the center has been cleared of any brush or obstacles. The first few rows are filled with familiar faces; Allura and Lance, wearing pastel pinks and blues; Hunk, wearing green and yellow, glancing between a book and the field; and Shiro, standing at attention beside them, though he has the day off. Their faces- hopeful and familiar- calm her nerves. 

 

Across the field, Keith twirls his sword, going through ornate katas that make his blade glit in the midday sun. When he realizes that she has arrived, he straightens up and waves. He dares not to smile, but his eyes glimmer with something like excitement. After this, no one will be able to deny their marriage; no one will be able to ignore the promises made to one another. Any other proposals, from either of their courts, would be  considered illegitimate, and duly ignored. Katie thinks back to Lotor, and the scene in her throne room. What if she's making the wrong choice? What if going through this leads to Terra being burned to the ground? The tightness in her chest returns. It's just one fight, she tells herself. It's just a few more minutes. It eases enough for her to breathe.

 

The crowd quiets as a Galra priest steps onto a podium. No, she corrects herself. He is the Torchkeeper; much more than a mere priest. If Katie remembers correctly, he is partly a religious figure, but also a person of  major power, in all of the Galran kingdoms. His domain has never been attacked, has never been taxed or raided.in the history books, they never speak of the title shifting, and so she wonders: is he the same Torchkeeper as the one referenced in the first tomes of Daibazzal’s history?  It is impossible to check; his name has never been listed.

 

“We gather here for a Duel of affection. In order to prove their worthiness to one another, and their love to the world, they must endure.”  A pale, purple hand rises from an oversized robe, undoubtedly sweltering in the summer sun. “Does anyone wish to challenge the duel?”

 

There is silence amongst the crowd, and for that, she is relieved.

 

The Torchkeeper nods in what could be approval, and annonces, “The Duel of affection may begin.”

 

The crowd goes quiet. Katie meets Keith's gaze. Keeping eye contact,  he breaks into a sudden run, crossing the distance between them in mere seconds. Katie forces herself to stay still, to not decide on a direction to escape to until he is close enough for her to smell the sweat on his skin, and then dashes to the right. Keith slides to a stop a few feet behind her, and turns, aiming for a second attack while her back is turned. Katie manages to turn and catch his blade in the gap of her knuckle dusters, and tries to twist his sword from his grasp. His strength overpowers hers, and he manages to free himself, before shoving her back with a soft kick. 

 

He's holding back in her, Katie realizes. His years and years of training could take her out in an instant; Matt’s half-forgotten katas, and Shiro’s guidance can only do so much, especially with her being so… soft. Katie leans forward, and feints a left jab, and then aims for his right side in a bitter uppercut. It only barely manages to brush against him before he grabs her with his other hand, and throws her to the ground, pinning her beneath him. He holds his sword to her neck, and smirks. 

 

“Is that it?”

 

Katie raises her knee and jabs him in the stomach. He groans, and she takes the opportunity to push him aside, and reverse their positions. “No.”

Katie thinks that she's won for a moment, but then feels the price of his blade on her shoulder. First blood wins, she remembers. She wonders what it means if they cut each other.

 

“It'd be a tie. True worthiness.” Keith supplies. 

 

Katie nods, and drags the edge on his collar. Dark crimson bubbles up and mixes with his sweat. She feels the sting on her back. The crowd erupts with applause, and the Torchkeeper raises his arms in approval. 

 

As she pulls herself to her feet, the warhorn cried out from the hills. Katie has never heard it, has never known it, but the sound, a low mournful cry, seems built into her genes. The older Terrans in the crowd all share the same, terrified look, and that is  how she knows that she is correct: the war has come for Terra, and it is all her fault.

  
  



	13. Refractions, reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally I don't do chapters this fast, but I started this back in November, and I'm really ready to move on to a new project. Two more chapters here (including a smut chapter in the end), and we're done, excluding a couple of bonuses and such. 
> 
> As for my next project, I want to try a different ship, so feel free to comment if you'd like a Hidge, Allurance, or Kidagance story. 
> 
> And remember to read and review!

The courtyard is silent for a single moment more, and then erupts into organized chaos. The stands empty in careful single file lines; the royals first, their guards and court, and finally, the commoners, who had expected today to be the treat of the year. There are plans for this, contingencies. The royals are supposed to go hide within the castle walls, where the original architect's hid safe rooms and secret passageways for this very purpose; the commoners have the choice to flee or fight. Their guards, and their court are to steel themselves to die.

 

Keith grabs her hand, keeps the other wrapped around his sword. “You need to get inside.”

 

Katie pull her hand away and looks up at the hills. She can see the first of the Galran flags raised above their green tops. The distance is too far for detail, but she swears that she sees some non-bipedal figures in there as well. She looks away as they crest and swell over the top, and finally, the warhorn stops with a sudden, off pitch groan. “I-”

 

Keith grabs her hand again, and tugs her towards the castle. Shiro is by the door, gathering some of Allura's court girls, while Allura offers them teary eyed words of comfort. Lance stands like a guard dog, sword out and held carefully, ready to strike if need be. “You don't have to be a hero right now. You have my army's support. You have your people. If you die today, our alliances will fall further into disarray, and your kingdom,” Keith's eyes harden into lilac jewels, sharp enough to cut. “Lotor will make short work of it.” 

 

“But it's my fault.” Her hand tightens around the handle of her weapon. “I can't have others die for my decision if I'm not going to fight for it.”

 

Keith seems puzzled. His grip goes slack. “What decision? What did you do?”

 

Screams echo from the city. The rumble of feet hitting the pavement sounds like thunder racing towards them. “We have to help them.”

 

Keith sighs heavily and pushes his hair back from his eyes. “Fine. But we stay together.”

 

Allura steps out of her dress, and tugs at her sleeves til they straighten out. Katie hadn't realized until now that her dress was made of two parts; the formal dress, and the undersuit, made of soft, woven armor, and yet still as beautiful and modest as her gown. She pulls a white stick from a hidden pocket, and then pressing a button on its side, causes it to grow into a six foot staff. Lance joins her beside Keith. 

 

“We'll fight with you.” Allura says, and there is sudden stubbornness in her voice that speaks of the siege on her own castle, the one where she had been hidden away, locked aside while her father, while her people had been massacred. “As friends, not as mere allies.”

 

“Yeah.” Hunk repeats, messing with the calibrations of his own weapon, a war hammer produced from somewhere unseen. “And I'd just like to point out how Lotor is not here, being friendly and all.”

 

Katie's cheeks burn, and she considers telling them why, but then Lance speaks up, and the thought fades away.

 

“Yeah, Katie. We're here for you.” Lance grins and musses up her hair. “Do we have a strategy, or…” He trails off.

 

Shiro gently shoulders his way between Katie and Allura. “It would make my job so much easier if wayward royals would hide like they were supposed to, but if you insist,” He cracks his knuckles in his human hand, and starts to draw in the dirt. “The Galra will kill everyone in their way, including civilians. It's in our best interest to get them clear before our armies move in; unlike the Galra, our men are uncomfortable with civilians getting in the way.” He looks up, sees Keith’s mouth pursed to argue. “This is more important than taking them on head on. If you all were to intervene, you'd only get in the way.”

 

“Okay.” Katie nods, straightening up. Her back still aches from Keith's cut. “So should we try for the Eastern sector? Clear that out first?” 

 

“Wait.” Shiro points to a hastily scrawled 'G’ by the northern sector of the town. “The monsters are likely be prowling ahead, so you'll run into them first. If that happens, run.” The way that he says it leaves no room for argument. “Don't use your real names. You never know who's listening. And if you can't run, don't bother hiding. They'll sniff you out.”

 

Allura's jovial expression has hardened a bit; Lance's jester like grin has lessened some. The danger seems palpable, like the smell of smoke slowly rising with the wind. 

 

“Good luck,” Katie says, voice thick.

 

Keith squeezes her hand, and they stand, and start off through the Eastern gate.

 

The path is heavily wooded, as the Eastern gate has not been used in years except for the occasional interloping lover. Katie herself hardly remembered that it existed until they were walking through it and into the surrounding woods. In the distance, some buildings are visible above the greenery, guiding them towards their target.

 

“What did you mean, that this was your fault?” Keith says, falling back to match her gait. Hunk lingers just within listening distance, nosy as he is. 

 

“I- I was going to tell you, after the duel, but then this happened and…” She trails off, and sighs, running a hand through her limp hair. “Lotor proposed to me, and told me that he could protect Terra if I married him. And I said no.”

 

“I-” Keith's expression softens, melts like butter on warm bread. His hand brushes against her cheek, and for a moment, she thinks that he's going to lean in and kiss her.

 

An arrow whizzes by her head, cutting her cheek. Before it even fully registers, Hunk is dragging her behind the trunk of a great oak tree. Another arrow flies past just as they find refuge, cutting Hunk on the shoulder. He hisses and clamps a hand down over the wound. “Guess catching them by surprise is out of the question.”

 

Katie rips the Hem of her jumpsuit, and ties the fabric around his shoulder, staunching the blood flow. Her outfit is padded in essential places- the heart, the chest, back of the knees; it's protection that Hunk doesn't have in his simple tunic and pants. It amazes her that he decided to go with them, unprotected as he is.

 

“No, I suppose not.” Katie gets on her stomach, and peeks around the trunk. She spots Shiro and Lance behind another, and squashed together behind a bush, Keith and Allura. In the distance, where the tower of the church peers through the trees, she spots a lone archer, waiting in the church tower. “I only see one. There might be another on the ground.”

 

Hunk raises a brow. “You got a plan?”

 

Katie shifts back behind the tree and thinks. If there's only one archer, then the most that he could do is pick them off one by one. If they run for it, there's a good chance that most of them will make it through uninjured, but most is not good enough. None of them have long range weapons either, which makes taking out the archer an impossibility. Oh! But inhibiting him isn't out of the question. Katie leans down on her stomach again, and shifts her weapon until the sun catches on it's surface. The light falls into Keith's face on the first try. He squints at her, and she shifts it higher, towards the tower. She can't be sure that it does much, but Keith gets her strategy, and adds his sword’s reflection too. 

 

Between the two of them, there seems to be enough light to blind their assailant. “Go.” Katie says. “Grab the others and head for the tower. We'll regroup there.”

 

Hunk hesitates, but then nods. “Okay.” He pulls himself to his feet with the help of the tree, and then stumbles into the open path. Allura stares at him wide eyed, but when he is not fired at, stands and follows. Lance and Shiro take the rest, and they make their way out of the forest and into the town. 

 

Katie sets her arm down and relaxes; her arm has started to hurt. Keith does the same. She stands, and looks up at the church tower. The glinting head of the arrow remains there, standing sentry. She glances over at Keith again, and then takes the chance, crossing between the two trunks with focused determination. She wants to hear what he has to say before it becomes a public event once more. 

 

An arrow flies over her head as she stumbles, but she is otherwise missed. 

“That was stupid.” Keith says, brushing blood off of her cheek. 

 

“We're not going to get a chance to talk for a while, not with the battle that's to come.” Katie slumps back against the tree and catches her breath. “So I wanted to know. You said before that Lotor had been sending messages at night. You were going to tell me more about it, but…” She trails off. Any of a million things had stopped him. 

 

“I don't think that this is the time.” Keith studies her face and then sighs, relenting. “But okay. I suspected that he was sending correspondence to my- to Zarkon, but I had no proof, and to accuse him without it would be...it would be grounds for a duel, and I didn't want that.”

 

“You would've won!”

 

The churchbell rings once, and they stand. Lance is waving from inside the tower. Katie waves back, and they head towards it. 

 

“I'm glad that you think so.” 

 

“You would've.” Katie insists.

 

Keith watches her with an almost sad look in his eye as they enter the church. “But I couldn't afford to lose you if I didn't.”

  
  
  
  
  



	14. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left. One. And then this story will be done. Over. XD I've been waiting for this for the longest, but the last chapter? That's the one you all have been waiting for. As always, thank you for reading and reviewing.

Lance coats his blade with a sweet smelling lacquer as Keith and Allura divide the commons up between them. The archer, a galran man with pretty purple skin, lies dead next to him. His armor still shines. The grip of his bow is slick with blood. She can’t take her eyes off of him. There is not a single scar on his hands, not a wound on his body. She can’t figure out where the blood came from. She cannot figure out why he is dead. 

 

Lance notices her staring, and throws a rug over him haphazardly. He takes the bow from where it lays beside the corpse, and examines it. “Could do some real damage with this.” He comments idly, setting his sword and poison aside. “Think we’ll have to protect this place?”

 

“If we use it as a base camp, possibly. After all, I don’t think it’s likely that we’d be able to bring so many people to the Castle unnoticed; we don’t want those Eastern gates to be found out if we don’t have to. “

 

“If Lance and I take these three blocks, and shepard the townspeople towards Hunk, then he and Shiro can guide them here.” Allura taps her chin, and then points to an alley to the west of the church. “There’s a route. Easily defensible, hard to find.” She looks up at Katie, pink eyes glimmering with something like determination. “I can strengthen the wards here, and prevent any warmongers from entering, but it won’t be any use if these grounds are unconsecrated. Are your churches still protected? Are they still the Havens that they used to be?”

 

Back during the first war, churches were known to be safe houses, protected by the Priests and Mages who lived inside. If a mother was not thought to survive childbirth, her husband would bring her to a church to be saved by it’s inherent magic, and by the Holy men inside. Katie remembers more than a few tales of the sick stumbling into abandoned churches, to wake as healthy as a newborn babe. Escapees of war had taken refuge, and overlooked by their hunters. If there is anywhere in the city safe to hide in, this is the place. 

 

Katie nods. “Yes, they are. Good thinking.”

 

Shiro points to the walls of the city. Though made of stone, and seemingly impenetrable, their walls are quivering with the force of the army outside. How they’d gotten there without the Terran armies being alerted is a mystery. “Katie, you and Keith should start over there. Don’t get too close to the walls; those who live there know to run, and those who will not, will die nonetheless. Guide them here, and be sure to clear the orphanage, and the merchant’s hall; they will be the most stubborn of them all.”

 

Katie nods, and starts for the door. Hunk grabs her hand, pulls her to a stop. He drapes an old curtain around her shoulder, fastens it like a cape around her neck. He drops the makeshift hood over her head, and nods. “Yeah, that’ll do. Don’t want them to know who you are at first glance.”

 

Her chest hurts at the thought that her friends might die today, might go missing like many others, lost in the chaos of war. She smiles, but it feels sad, feels heavy and wrong.  “Thank you, Hunk. I’ll see you when this is over?”

 

“Of course. Takes more than an army and a couple of monsters to get rid of me.” She hugs him, and follows Keith out into the street.

 

It is quiet.

 

The houses in front of them, run down, broken things, left to rot for lack of supplies, are quiet too. Katie knows that people live there; that beggars and drunks, and all of those ailed with the inability to find a home for themselves live in places like these. She has the urge to fling open their doors, call out for them, but she knows that that is a stupid thought. If the archer, the scout, had made his way all the way over here unnoticed, then he would not be so stupid as to leave them alive so close to his snipers’ nest.

 

Keith’s fingers interlock with hers as they move down the alleyways towards their goal. Katie has never been this deep into her own city. She’d snuck out once or twice, yes, but for the most part, she always stayed close to the castle. The roads here are not paved with smooth cobblestone, like the roads around the castle are. The windows of the buildings they pass are often broken, or warped, or not there at all. In a few of the alley’s the traverse through, there are open holes over the sewers, to allow the inhabitants of the buildings to dump their piss pots in. She wrinkles her nose as the two of them walk around it.

 

“I had no idea there were parts of the city like- like this.”

 

Keith guides her towards the orphanage, a solid well-built building with crumbling corners, and graffiti on the back door. “When the world is at war, everyone suffers. Infrastructure is left unattended. Progress is halted. Though I suppose with how they keep you locked up all the time, you wouldn’t know that.”

 

“No.” Katie says quietly. “I didn’t.”

 

Keith knocks on the door of the orphanage softly, and when the door doesn’t open, uses his sword to pry it open. Twenty-something wide-eyed kids huddle behind it, kitchen knives and spatulas held in grubby hands. 

 

Katie peers inside, but sees no caretaker, no one above the age of twelve. “Is- is there no on watching you?”

 

The kids look at each other, and then separate, allowing a thin, nappy haired girl to step forward. Her hands are in balls by her side, and although she is no older than twelve, Katie knows that she’d be ready to put up a fight, if needed; she has the same hungry look in her eyes that Keith did, when they’d first met. 

 

“She left to go get food this morning, before the horn. Didn’t come back. Now there’s monsters outside.” She pulls a rusted cleaver out of her belt and twists it between nimble fingers. “We weren’t gon disappear like Shaline did.”

 

“Shaline?”

 

“She’s sixteen years, older than the rest of us, so she went out to look for help. Told us to stay here, but she din’t come back. She’s dead.”

 

Katie looks over them. Many of them are young, too young to be worrying about their lives, to be holding old and abused kitchen tools in preparation to fight for their lives. She looks to Keith, then back to the girl. “We’re going to take you somewhere safer, alright? But you all have to stay really close and really quiet. Can you guys do that for me?”

 

The girl stares at the kids around her hard. One by one, they nod. “We can.”

 

“Okay.” Katie nods back. She tightens her grip on her weapon, and steps back out into the unforgiving light of day. Keith heralds the children into two lines, semi-connected by interlocked hands. She notices that a couple still hold their ‘weapons’ like safety blankets, but she doesn’t chastise them for it; she can’t blame them for wanting to hold a piece of their fate in their own hands. “Stay close.” She warns again, and then they start out the back door towards the church.

 

The shadows of the buildings, which had seemed protective on the way here, seem like monsters writhing just out of sight. Katie jumps whenever one seems too large, or shifts too quickly. Keith clenches his hand around the handle of his blade, and nudges children forward when they stray too far. 

 

Katie thinks that they’ll make it. She thinks that they’ll be fine. And then she’s sure that she’s made a mistake somehow, that her fervent wishing has brought the opposite down upon her. In the intersection at the end of the alleyway, a  _ thing  _ stalks into view. It’s limbs are long and spindly, and where hands should be, there are only jagged claws. Katie looks for a head instinctively; that is the most easily identifiable weak point is. But instead, she only sees a mouth, too wide, and too full of teeth to close. A tongue slithers out to taste the air. Katie holds her breath. Keith tenses beside her. 

 

The monster stalks in the other direction, slow and purposeful. 

 

One of the children sneezes. 

 

It turns around so fast that it's hands scrape on the wall, blowing dust and debris towards them. Their silence is broken as their wards begin to scream, and break into a collective dash for the edge of the alley. Keith grabs one of the taller kids by the shoulders and points at the church tower, poking above the treetops. “Take them there, and don't look back.”

 

The kid nods, and runs off, barefoot shouting orders to the others. Katie nods, satisfied, and then turns back to the problem at hand. The monster stares at them, drooling, and then lashes a tentacle at them. Katie rolls to the side and takes cover behind a wooden cart. Keith jumps like a cat and takes refuge on the ledge of a first story window. 

 

“Does this thing even have a head? How are we supposed to kill it?” Katie asks, hand tightening around the handle of her weapon, then switches hands to wipe her sweat on her pants. 

 

Keith jumps up the there second floor balcony, and pulls himself over the edge into a pile of drying laundry. He detangles himself from a pair of pants, and studies the monster for a moment more. Without anything in its line of sight, it seems lost. It stands swaying in the alley, and Katie wonders if they'll be able to escape it. But no. If they leave it, it could follow them back to the church, or worse, be left as a trap for other evacuating citizens. 

 

Keith grins, and climbs to the very edge of the platform, sword extended. “Perhaps it doesn't, but everything has a heart.” He jumps down, stabbing his sword through the monster's mouth, and using his weight to pull it backwards, revealing it's chest. “Now!.” He shouts, clearly struggling with keeping it still. 

 

Katie comes out of her hiding spot, and punches it's chest where it's heart should be. With the sharpness of her weapon, and the force behind her punch, she manages to tear it's thick skin, and push through until she's inside him to the wrist.

 

She looks at Keith. Keith looks at her. The monster shudders, and slaps them away with its armored arms. Katie hits the cart, previously used as a point of refuge, and it shatters. Keith lands somewhere behind the monster. 

 

It stalks towards her, arms moving almost to fast to see. Two more grow from the wound she'd created, small and stunted. Another two sprout from Keith’s, and those are large and spiked like the head of a javelin. They rise above the monster’s shoulders, and strike.

 

Katie kicks a length of wood from the cart into the air, and it shatters with the force of it’s strike. Wooden shards strike the vicinity, a few digging into her forearms as she protects her face. She shrugs her robe off, pulling a few wood shards with it, and slides into a defensive position.

 

“K-” Katie cuts herself off, remembers Shiro’s rule about not using their names. What else is she supposed to call him? “Asshole! Numbnuts! I could use a little help here.”

 

The monster drools, and clicks it's teeth. It whips at her again, one on each side of her. She grabs a wheel, and twists it as the arm shoots through it, entangling it between the spokes. A hot, heavy pain hits her side, but she ignores it, and saws through the tip of its hand until it falls off, gushing blood. 

 

The monster pulls out of her side, and back, gearing up to strike her again. She steps back, a hand going to her side instinctively as hot blood rolls down her side. She raises her weapon; it is unlikely that she will be able to do much damage, but damn if she isn't going to try.

 

A spear pins the monster against the opposite wall. It writhes and tries to free itself, but only manages to earn another spear, this one in its second tentacle.

 

“Pidge?”

 

The voice is familiar, but it's not Keith.

 

He jumps from the roof of the building, and land in a crouch in front of her. As he straightens up, she realizes that only two people other than Keith would ever call her that, and the voice that she'd just heard is too young to be her father. 

 

“Matt!” His name comes out like a sob. Her side hurts like hell, and the blood is slipping through her fingers like bathwater but she doesn't care. Her brother, oh god, her brother.  She thought he was dead and now he's not, and by the God's, he's not. “Matt.” She says again, and he hugs her, carefully, cautiously, but full of love.

 

“It was hard getting back to you, but I did it. I tried to get here before mom,” He swallows. “Before she died but, at least I'm here now.”

 

The monster groans and tears free, stumbling towards them. Matt reaches behind his back to grab another spear, but finds nothing there. He stands in front of her protectively, and raises his hand like he can punch the thing away. 

 

A sword appears in its stomach, and rips all the way down the middle. It splits in two and falls, revealing Keith standing behind it, blood in his hair, dripping down into his face like paint, lips curled back into a dangerous scowl. Upon seeing Katie, he relaxes, shifts back from the fierceness of the fight and becomes himself again. His scowl turns into a grin, and his sword is forgotten as he limps over to her. 

 

“Thought you were dead. Thought he’d got you.” Keith grabs her cheeks, and his hands are wet and sticky, but she doesn’t care. She leans forward and they kiss, and she feels like she’ll be okay, like everything will be just fine, because how could it turn out any other way when he’s kissing her like that, like she’s his whole world. 

 

When they pull apart, she can taste the bitterness of blood on her tongue. Matt raises an eyebrow. “I must’ve missed more than I’d thought.”

 

She giggles, suddenly lightheaded. “Well, at least you’ll be here for the wedding.”

 

“Wedding?” Matt asks, wide-eyed, but Katie can’t answer him anymore. Her head feels full of hot air, rising high into the sky, leaving her aching side and weary body behind. 

 

As she closes her eyes, she feels Keith scoop her into his arms, and murmur into her hair, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

  
  
  



	15. Happy ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The very end. I'm so happy to have had you all along for the ride, and I hope you like this ending as much as I do. Hopefully I will be able to add a few interludes at a later point (more smut, more little tidbits that didn't get added the first time), but I dunno. Thank you all so much for reading and commenting, and please let me know what you think!

The five parts of a happy ending:

 

1.

(Not dying)

 

Katie opens her eyes, and everything hurts. Her back, from being tossed around like a rag doll; her arm, from the wooden splinters that had gotten lodged in her skin; and her side, from the stabbing. Except her side doesn’t hurt like a stab wound should. It aches, and calls for her attention, but does not take it from her as cruelly like a wound so grievous should.

 

She sits up, and leans against the headboard as she feels for the wound beneath her shirt, but finds none; just a newly healed scar, puckered and sore.

 

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Keith asks as he steps in from the balcony. The curtains flap in the wind behind him as the rain pushes past him, just like the night after he’d proposed. He’d worn a red tunic then, bright red like blood, but tonight, his tunic is black, as if he were in mourning. Brown for the Terrans, Pink for the Alteans, she’s pretty sure that black is for death, but to be honest, she isn’t so sure. 

 

“What is?” Her voice sounds strange, her throat thick as if she’d been sleeping for a long time. She clears it, and asks again.

 

“Allura did that. Some kind of healing magic that had you napping like sleeping beauty for the better part of a fortnight, but hey, you’re alive, right?” 

 

“A fortnight?” Well that explains her voice. 

 

Keith closes the door behind him, and ties the curtains back, so that they can still see the storm outside. “And it’s been raining ever since then.”

 

Katie is unsure if Keith knows of how important rain is in Terran religion. Their country has always been agricultural based, for as long as the Great Stories have existed. Too much or too little rain could mean a season’s crop gone to waste; it could save you, or condemn you to hell. For the rain to have gone on since the battle, is for the Gods to show their favor. They too wish for this war to be over. They too believe that what was done was right. Katie supposes that one could even stretch it to mean that Katie is the true ruler of Terra, and that her rule has been blessed, but Katie does not mean to stretch it that far. She is just happy for the grey skies, and that rain that pelts against her window. 

“Why are you so far away?” She pats the bed beside her as she reaches over to her bedside table, and brightens it, outdoing the overcast morning light. “Come sit with me. If I’ve missed so much…” She trails off. In two weeks, everything could have changed. 

 

Keith sits beside her carefully, leaning away so that his clothes don’t drip onto her. He must’ve been out there a while, as the rain isn’t that bad, and he seems like he just fell into a bath and climbed back out. She looks up at him, and realizes that his clothes are plastered to his skin like paint. With only a single lamp to light her room, the details are hard to make out, but she is certain that he is wearing court clothes too, and when she looks to his face, she realizes that his hair is cut, shorter on one side than the other. 

 

Katie scoots closer to him, and traces the scar on the side of his face. It runs from just above his ear to a jagged stop a few inches back. The hair there is shorn short, and although it ends abruptly, and contrasts heavily with the rest of his sopping mop of her, she decides that she likes it; it is proof that he survived, and still stands strong despite it. 

 

“I’m fine. Allura took care of it. It’ll scar, but not much.” 

 

“I thought you died back then, when you wouldn’t get back up. But you didn’t. You’re alive.” Her words are soft, more for herself than for him, but saying them aloud makes her realizes just how close they were- and she doesn’t want to think about that. 

 

She knots her fingers in the expensive fabric of his tunic, and pulls him down so that she can reach his face. It’s a struggle to reach his mouth, even sitting down. After a moment of trying uselessly, she growls at him; a sound of frustration and anger and fear, and he relents, bowing over so that she can reach him. His lips are warm despite the rain, and when she pulls him even closer, she can feel his heat burning through the thin linens of his shirt. 

 

“We’re both alive. I never thought we’d get this far.”

 

“But we did.” Keith says as he leans over her. Cold water drips onto her shirt, down her cleavage and onto her stomach. She shivers, and he tries to pull back. When she tugs him again, he kisses her again, pushing her into the mattress. “Does that mean we get a prize?” He says, voice low.

 

Katie nods, grinning, and he kisses her again. His shirt presses onto hers and wets her tunic up,  but she doesn’t mind, not when she can feel his heart thrumming through his chest, telling her that this is not a dream, that they are alive. Keith pulls back, and tugs his tunic off. A button snaps off in his rush to toss it away, but he doesn’t care, and neither does she. How can she care about something so stupid as a broken shirt when he’s looking at her like that, like she’s all that he ever wants to see? There’s something in his eyes, something hungry, and she can hardly bare those few empty moments when he’s not touching her. 

 

Easily fixed, she thinks as she leans up, and kisses him, softly at first, and then harder as he pushes back, fingers tangling in her hair, tongue brushing against her lip like a hot coal. Katie’s breathless, the air is too hot to breathe, too thick with his scent, all sword polish and musk and unmistakably Keith, but she doesn’t want to pull away, so she doesn’t. This is me being selfish, she thinks. This is me doing exactly what I want with no consequences. She wants to touch his chest, so she does. She traces the planes of his chest, nails creating tiny trails against tanned skin as he ducks into the crook of her neck and sucks on the spot just below her ear. A sound escapes her throat, something between a moan and a whimper, and he pulls back, panting.

 

“I’m happy too, Katie.” He grins and plucks at her tunic, thoroughly soaked and plastered to her chest, grey fabric practically see through with how wet her shirt is. “But I’m pretty sure we should stop here, lest we do the marriage thing out of order.” 

 

Katie doesn’t want to stop, but she knows that he’s right. Any further, and she won’t be able to stop. She won’t want to. She pouts and grabs a sweater from off of the floor. She turns her back to him, and pulls her shirt off, slides her sweater on. “Distract me then. What happened, Keith? What’d I miss during my nap?”

 

Keith shrugs and scoots to the edge of the bed, keeping the other half dry. She sits beside him, and lays her head on his shoulder. “I brought you back to the castle, with Matt in tow. The rebel forces that he came with, they dragged that monster’s corpse back with them, and I guess the sight of all of us was enough to inspire them to win. I was told that some of my soldiers refused to fight at first, or weren’t fighting as well as they should’ve been. But when we came back…” He trails off and pokes at her chest, laughing as she swats his hand away. “You know, they’ve been calling us ‘the Missing Prince’, and ‘the Green and Red Paladins’. And the Siege,” He laughs as if the thought were truly funny. “They named that after us as well.”

 

“Named it what?”

 

“Katke. The Siege of Katke.” He smiles fondly, and Katie wonders just who’d come up with that. 

 

“‘Katke’? That doesn’t sound like much of anything. Kinda sounds like a cough or a sneeze.”

 

Keith holds his hands up, as if to say, don’t blame me. “Hey, I didn’t come up with it. It’s supposed to be ‘Kat’, like ‘Katie’, and ‘Ke’ like ‘Keith’. ‘Course most of the commoners just say it like ‘Caught- key’, so the romance of it is kind of lost.”

 

“It’s still plenty romantic.” Katie chides him. The name of the battle will live on long after they die. It’s kind of endearing; her legacy,  _ their  _ legacy will outlive them both. “Even if it is mispronounced.”

 

“Perhaps.” He admits, sliding out of bed. “I’d better go. Your brother will want to see you; the court too. I shouldn’t monopolize you just yet.” He slides his shirt back on, and grimaces at its coldness. 

 

“But I’ll see you later, right?”

 

Keith grins as he steps back onto the balcony. The rain makes his hair seem to melt against his skin, and with him in his bright red tunic, he reminds her of the day that they’d met. Nothing really has changed, has it?

 

“Count on it.” He says, and then disappears back into the storm.

 

(When the breakdown she was trying to avoid tracks her down)

 

Katie takes a long bath, soaks in the warm water until she’s melted into the water like butter on a stove. She imagines the heat soaking into her skin, wrestling it’s way into her muscles and into her bones, melting away the soreness and pain that still lingers in her body. She tries to ignore the strange tightness of her side, the aches that still throb beneath her skin, reminding her of the battle, of the monster that she and Keith had killed, but it’s hard to keep her mind off of it when the evidence lingers in her skin. 

 

She’s on the precipice of a realization. Katie knows she is. It’s like when she’d been working on Shiro’s arm, and she’d been so close to figuring out how to direct the heat away from her skin, but she couldn’t figure it out, not until she’d taken a break, and let her guard down, and let it come barreling into her mind like a runaway cart. 

 

It comes to her, hits her so hard, that she starts to choke on her own breath. 

 

She almost died.

 

If not for Matt’s unlikely reappearance, she would have died. If not for Keith’s sudden resurrection, Terra would have been left without a ruling monarch. When it had happened, she hadn’t had the time to pause and think; there had been no time for her adrenaline to fade away, for the realization of how close she had been to death to creep into her mind. But it’s over now, and in the silence and peace of her bath, it all comes back.

 

The monster, poised to kill her, so close that she could see the skin in its teeth, jagged and sharp like the points of knives. She’d known that she as going to die, but she hadn’t cared. She was going to fight til the end, until she had nothing left to give, and it hadn’t bothered her. Then Matt saved her, a miraculous return of the prodigal son, who still couldn’t slay it. Katie had thought that Keith was dead, out of the fight at the very least, but he’d saved her, like he always did. 

 

Why is he always saving her?

 

Katie is shaking so bad that the bathwater has started to slosh over the sides and onto the floor. She pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them, grabbing herself so tightly that her side cries out with pain. Blood swirls into the water, but she hardly notices. 

 

She almost died, and  _ she’d enjoyed it _ . She’d liked the rush of adrenaline in her veins, the beating of her heart like a war drum inside her chest. She’d liked hurting the monster, breaking it down until it bled. She’d even liked getting hurt, because every time the monster injured her was another time that she’d survived. She’d gotten high off of it, high off of the pain that was hers:  that which she felt and that which she’d inflicted. 

 

It wasn’t even that she felt bad about it. Katie felt bad, because she  _ didn’t  _ feel bad about it. 

 

The water is tinted pink now from the torn skin on her side. The soapy water burns as it digs into her skin, grounding her. She gets out of the bath, and towels down. When she is dry, Katie stands in front of the mirror in her bedroom and looks herself over. Her skin is covered in bruises; dark purples and startling reds on her back and thighs, with dying yellows and greens covering her stomach and arms. She feels like a watercolor painting, and the thought startles her enough to make her laugh. The skin on her side is pink, like the skin of a baby, and broken like a ripped shirt in the center, as if two people had played tug of with her skin. Katie sticks a bandage on it, and ignores it; if she doesn’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist. 

 

Katie looks at her face last, because of everything, she’d expected it to change the least. But her eyes are harder than they were before, and seem to stare back at her with the experience of someone much older than her eighteen years. It unnerves her, more than her experience in the bath did. Katie turns away, and creeps into her room to get dressed. 

 

Katie should wear one of her court dresses. Something pretty and floofy, with a tight corset that requires the help of at least two other people to get her in. Her side throbs at the idea. To wear such a restricting outfit would make her vulnerable, if another attack occurred. How would she be able to defend herself, if she could barely walk? How could she protect the ones that she loves, if she can barely breathe? No, even if her side wasn’t a problem, she wouldn’t be able to wear a dress again. At least, not the kind that was expected of her. 

 

She considers her options. She could wait for her tailor to make something for her, and stay in her room until then. Or she could try to wear one of her brother’s old outfits. Surely there was something from his youth that she could fit, and not look like a child playing dress-up in.

 

She kneels in front of her bed, and reaches to pull out the old bin of clothes, but as she leans over, she spots a folded pile of glittering green fabric on her bedside table. Katie stands, and shakes them out. A green tunic, embroidered like a court gown, but cut like a men’s tunic, and a pair of brown britches, cut and tailored to her size. Underneath the two is a belt, with loops to hang her weapons on.  When she pulls them on, she finds a note tucked into her pants pocket. She pulls it out, smooths the parchment, and reads.

 

_ I didn’t think a court dress would be very comfortable with all of your injuries, (and to be perfectly honest, I haven’t been comfortable in a dress since the Siege of Altea, so I’m sure that the recent battle has left you just as restless), so I had this outfit made for you while you were resting. I hope you like it.  _

 

_ -Allura _

 

Tears bead at the corners of her eyes, and she rushes to wipe them away. Katie’s been so emotional today; of course something as small as a gift from a friend would set her off. She glances up at the clock as she heads for the door. If she hurries, she can make it to breakfast in the main hall. 

 

She pauses in her doorway, her gaze caught on her crown discarded on her desk. Now that Matt is back, she should give it to him. Is she supposed to just hand it to Matt? Is there supposed to be a ceremony for it? Does she wear it to breakfast, and then take it off and hand it over? 

 

In the end, she decides to hook it onto her belt, on the same loop as her weapon. She finds the lack of weight on her head to be strange.

 

3.

(Reunions)

 

Katie feels awkward when she walks into the dining hall, and the whole table falls silent. Some of the lesser lords and ladies stare at her openly, and reverently, as if she had just come back from the dead to walk among them. Matt pushes his chair back so hard, it falls over, and almost knocks her over as he sweeps her off of her feet in a great bear hug. They spin in a sloppy circle, as Matt almost loses his balance. When he puts her down, his hand lingers on her arm, as if afraid that she might disappear if he isn’t touching her.

 

“I’ve been gone for nearly three years, and you haven’t grown at all.” He grins at her annoyed expression, and squeezes her cheeks She scowls and pushes his hand away. “But you have grown up. You’ve done a good job taking care of Terra. She shines from your guidance” He smiles at her proudly.

 

She knows that she should just accept his praise, sit down and eat her breakfast, but she can’t. Katie just doesn’t deserve it. “Sure I have,” She snorts. Outside of the hall window, the city still smokes. Buildings are broken. Holes pepper their walls. If she had done a good job, it wouldn’t look like that.  “That’s why we’re currently facing war in our capital for the first time in generations.”

 

“This battle has had the least amount of casualties compared to any other since the beginning to the war.” Matt leads her to the empty chair beside him, glances down at the crown latched to her waist as it bangs against the chair, keeps talking as if it doesn’t matter how she chooses to wear it. “And this victory was great for morale. People believe that this war in winnable once more. You have done much better for Her than I would have.” 

 

The way he says it, it’s as if he actually believes it, but that just doesn’t make any sense. She’d never been prepared for this. She’d planned to spend her life, inventing, learning; married but powerless. She’d gotten used to the idea. Even he should understand that she’s not right for this job. A small voice in her head argues with her that perhaps she isn’t so bad at ruling as she claims she is; it is her selfishness that urges her to give her responsibility away. 

 

A servant pours her a cup of steaming coffee, and she takes a small sip. It’s best not to argue against her brother, as stubborn as he is. She fingers the crown on her waist, and then unhooks it, setting it between the pot of coffee and the biscuits. Matt looks at her confusedly, half a biscuit hanging out of his mouth like an outstretched tongue.  

 

“Wha-?”

 

“You’re back.” Katie says quietly. As if sensing her need for privacy, the rest of the table returns to their own conversations, covering her words with their own. A few weeks ago, this wouldn’t have happened; they would have kept on listening to fulfill their own curiosities. Is this the proof of Matt’s words? Has their respect been well earned? “The crown is rightfully yours. I’ll happily step down; I’m going to marry Keith anyways, so I’ll still be a queen.” She pushes it towards him. He grabs her wrist and stops her before it crosses the table fully.

 

“You’ve already been inaugurated. You’re already the ruling monarch. I’m not going to take that from you.” Matt says softly, like he’s pleading with her. 

 

Katie’s eyes burn, and she feels like crying again, not because she’s upset, but because she’s frustrated. This is what she’s supposed to do, is it not? “Take it!” She says, her voice just a little too loud. “I didn’t ask for it, and I don’t want it.”

 

Matt grabs her wrist, and drags her out into the hallway, empty except for a guard at the far end. She rubs her wrist ruefully, despite the lack of pain, and watches as Matt paces in front of the door, anxiously. “Well?” He looks up at her, and she can see it in his eyes that he’s not angry. He’s scared. “What’d you drag me all the way out here for?” 

 

Matt stops, and takes a deep breath. When she’d first seen him, he’d looked impossibly older, like he’d left for ten years rather than three. Like a man, rather than a boy playing at being one. But right now, he seems just like he did when they were kids. A scared little boy, repeating the ritual rites under his breath to keep his hands from shaking. He grabs her hands, and squeezes them. “I’m in love with Shiro.” It all comes out in a single breath, a single exhale.

 

“You- but- he-” She sputters, unsure of what to say, how to react. It all becomes so clear. If he were to be King, there would be pressure for him to marry, to have kids, and he wouldn’t be able to stay with Shiro, not monogamously. The most that they could ever have is a few moments alone, on trips without his wife, nights spent where they should not be. And his wife, whoever she were to be, she would live a loveless marriage with him, and that just wasn’t right, for any of them. “I get it. I- I- understand.”

 

“I’m sorry. I know it’s selfish to put this on you when I know that you don’t want it, but these last few years, they’ve been hell. I only ever survived this long because I knew that Shiro would be here, waiting for me.”

 

It hurts, just a little, but Katie is not an asshole. Her brother has been through enough. She can give him this. 

 

She stands on her tip toes, and kisses his cheek. “Then I give you my blessing. Go be happy.”

 

Matt hugs her again, and as he leads her back to the dining room, smiling like she’d just handed him the sun, she knows that she’s made the right decision, even if her heart aches at the thought of the role she will have to bear for the rest of her life. 

 

There will be assasination attempts, she thinks.

 

But I have survived those, and can survive many more.

 

There will be mutinies, she tells herself.

 

Not now, when she has proved herself a hero; not a coward who hides behind her walls.

 

There will be betrayals, she reminds herself.

 

And I will bear them without breaking.

 

“Matt?” Katie breaks a biscuit in half, smears it in jelly until it drips it like blood.

 

He looks up, a piece of fried meat held between his fingers. “Yeah?”

 

“What happened to Lotor?” He’d started this whole mess, had probably led Zarkon’s army right to her doorstep. But he’d also had time to leave, to escape during the chaos of that afternoon’s duel, and the time after, when she’d been recovering. 

 

Matt grins  and grease drips down his chin. “His own generals betrayed him. Caught him just a few towns North, and dragged him back in exchange for transport back home, and a gurantee of their safety. Trust me, he won’t be bothering you again.”

 

Katie takes the crown from where it lays between their two spots, and sets it gingerly on her head. She hardly even notices the weight, she’s so happy. 

 

(Long awaited Marriage)

 

The wedding was meant to be a large, royal affair, held in the castle chapel. The Chapel was damaged during the Siege of Katke. Their combined team of advisors and wedding planners scramble to find a new venue. Then there is the matter of invitations, many of which have been lost on the way to their recipients due to the sudden battle. Katie tells them that the only people she cares about having there are already at the castle. Another problem arises, then another. Katie tells them that if they do not have them married by the end of the week, she’ll fire them all. 

 

She doesn’t mean it, but the threat works. A month after Keith’s proposal, they are set to be married. 

 

Katie wears her mother's dress. It was a plain lavender, modest in it’s high neckline and long skirts. When she’d first decided to wear it, she’d tried it on, and winced at her reflection in the mirror; it was too long, too high collared, and much too feminine to suit her androgynous body. She has no idea how to fix this, but with Allura’s advice, the tailor turns it into something completely new, that still manages to leave her heart aching with loss. The bodice has a squared collar, yet still retains the embroidered designs of plants reaching for the shining stars. The skirt is cut, and is shorter in the front than in the back, allowing her movement of her legs, and yet mimicking the appearance of a trail. She doesn’t look like her mother much, but in her eyes, and the shape of her eyebrows, she can see her remainants. Her mother should be there with her. Her father, too. At the very least, she is glad that she still has her friends, and her brother to walk her down the aisle.

 

“Oh, you're so pretty in that dress.” Matt says, tearing up. He looks so ugly when he cries, and since they have near the same face, she knows that she does too. 

 

“Oh don't you cry,” Katie warns. Tears start to prick at her eyes already, and she blinks to send them away. “‘Cause if you cry, I'm gonna-” 

 

Tears start to stream down his face, and his cheeks turn red as he tries to wipe them away. “But you’re getting married, Pidge, and I’m walking you down the aisle! How am I supposed to  _ not  _ cry?”

 

Katie feels a hot tear roll down her cheek, as he pulls her into a hug. She presses her face into his chest, and is glad that she is not wearing makeup. “Because today is a happy day, and I don’t wanna walk down the aisle with puffy eyes, and a runny nose.”

 

Matt pulls back, sniffs. The sleeve of his suit, a long sleeved tunic made with the heavy woven cloth native to Terra’s southern fields, is wrinkled now, and slightly damp with tears and snot. He offers her his other arm, and leads her to the doors of the chapel, the same one that they had sheltered in during the siege. The magic that surrounds the place, and protects it is undeniable now; she can feel it beating beneath her feet like a heartbeat, as if she stands inside of a person, protected by them, body and soul. 

 

She dabs at her own eyes, and takes a big sniff to clear her nose. “Okay. I’m ready.”

 

Matt nods, and kisses her on the forehead. He pushes the doors open and they step inside.

 

The church is filled with friendly and smiling faces. The church benches are packed with people, overflowing into the aisle in places. Some without the seat stand lining the walls like sentries in their finest wares, uncomfortable no doubt, but smiling nonetheless. The rafters are covered in flowering vines- Juniberries in mid-bloom, from her own garden. Their sweet, candy-like scent fills the room, masking the heady smell of sweat and salt. The windows, broken or non-existant before the wedding, have been replaced with beautiful panes of colored glass, depicting scenes of the Siege of Katke, intermixed with illustrations of the Gods- Milfor, the rain-bringer, and soother or pains; Aide, the lover, and the guard of hearts; Shinea, the Sun, and all that is bright; Bikido, who wages war and gives honor. There are so many of them, and Katie only knows maybe twenty of them, maybe less; but their gazes comfort her, and fill the room with their celestial presence. 

 

At the end of the aisle, Keith awaits her, decked in a rose colored suit. The fabric is embroidered with silver thread- silver for long lasting love, instead of gold, which would have suited him better, but meant promiscuity in Galran culture. His tunic flows down to his knees, and yet looks good on him all the same. He seems like one of Bikido’s warriors; strong, and yet kind all the same. Whereas he normally does not smile except for his eyes, today, he does not hide it. He grins proudly, even as he twists the ring on his finger relentlessly in his nervousness. 

 

Good, she thinks, because I’m nervous too. 

 

She spots her friends in the first two rows, and an empty seat for Matt to take once he has deposited her at the altar. Allura and Lance wear beautiful shifts, bronze skin covered from their ankles to their necks. Katie was never too good at remembering all of these customs and traditions, but if she remembers right, to be so modest at another’s wedding was to bestow goodwill upon them, and fertility. She looks past them, blinking hard to force away her budding tears. Beside them sits Hunk and Shay, who smile at her proudly, and in the opposite row is Shiro, his flower held between the fingers of his prosthetic hand. She can only catch a color- pink, as Matt leads her past. Was that pink for a rose- to symbolize love, generically? Or was it an Azalea, the symbol for womanhood, and fraile passion, and the gentle order to take care of herself? She glances back once more, and confirms it. An Azeala, from her oldest friend. 

 

They reach the altar, decorated with lotus blossoms for fertility, the corpses of two snakes, killed in the midst of mating, and Keith’s knife. Katie looks up at him, but he just winks. How in the hell did he get it back? Matt leaves her there, opposite of Keith, and then goes to sit beside Shiro. 

 

The Priest stands behind the altar, hood lowered. Katie starts, and regrets not paying more attention to her wedding planning. How did she not know that he would be the one marrying them? The Torchkeeper smiles at her, amused, and then begins to recite the strange combination of Galra religious passages, and Terran wedding vows. 

 

She zones out a bit as he goes through the parts that she doesn’t have to respond to. There’ll be the actual rite of marriage, but that part is simple; all she has to do is say yes. The hard part is going to be when he asks them each to renew themselves before they bind their souls. Or in other words, to claim a new name. Normally this is as simple as choosing one’s nickname. Katie would work just fine. It would work, yes, but it doesn’t feel right. If she’s going to be a new person, she should leave ‘Katie’ behind.

 

“And as you are bound, heart, and blood and soul, renew yourselves beneath hi-” The Torchkeeper pauses, and clears his throat. The Galra only believe in two gods: Orlahim and his female counterpart, while the Terrans believe in many. “ Beneath their light. Cast away your sins, and speak of your new designation.”

 

He turns to Keith first, perhaps out of habit. 

 

“I cast away ‘Keithian’ for the designation of ‘Keith’.” The Torchkeeper nods, and repeats his new name.

 

“I cast away ‘Kathryn’ for the designation of ‘Pidge’.” Katie hadn’t expected it. She really hadn’t meant to say it, but as she does, it becomes so painfully clear that it is the right choice. She is Pidge; she always has been.

 

He clasps one of her hands, and grins at her at he continues on. “Today we bond two people together with the holy rites of matrimony. Two people become one; to protect each other, to fight for each other, to live for each other, and to die for each other. Your love shall be everlasting, and your blood will be bound.” The Torchkeeper lets go of one of her hands, but holds onto the other. He grabs Keith’s too, and then draws their hands together. They interlock naturally, her small palm swallowed in his. “Your countries will become but one; to protect each other, to fight for each other, to live for each other, and to die for each other. Do you swear it, Pidge of Terra?”

 

She swallows, and then nods. “I do.”

 

“Do you swear it, Keith of Daibazzal?”

 

“With all my heart, I do.” His voice breaks, raw with emotion.

 

“Then you are wed.” The Torchkeeper grins at them, and the crowd breaks into cheers and applause. Pidge can hear Lance in the audience yelling at Keith to kiss her, and Allura shushing him. She can’t stop grinning, not even when Keith follows Lance’s advice, and kisses her, their teeth knocking together because even he, Keith the stoic, cannot help but smile. It’s taken so long for them to get here, and it feels so good to have finally done it. 

 

They break apart reluctantly, and grin at their friends. The Torchkeeper stands behind them, just a little too close, and murmurs. “When should you like the ward of consummation to take place?”

 

Pidge furrows her brows. She knows that she should’ve done more research on this whole wedding thing, but the first two parts of it had seemed easy; give Keith something to show that they were intending to wed, and then fight him to show that she was worthy. The ‘Ward of Consummation’ wasn’t as conviently named, and with all that had been going on, she’d forgotten about it. She looks to Keith sheepishly, embarressed at her lack of preparation. “Uh, Keith?”

 

“Tonight. After the feasting is over.” Keith supplies, and the Torchkeeper backs away as they start their descent into the aisle, hands still clasped together like a vine around a tree.

 

“What exactly is the ‘Ward of consummation’?” She asks, low enough so that the audience pressed so closely around them cannot hear.

 

“Didn’t do your reading, did you?” 

 

Pidge shrugs. “Maybe not. I have been a little bit busy with ruling my country and-” Her words end in a squeak as Keith sweeps her off of her feet, and carries her over the threshold. 

 

Outside the church, the feast awaits; fountains of strawberry soup, steaks and other meats, breads, fresh fruits, and a big, white cake. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing you needed to study for.” He whispers into her ear. His breath tickles, and she slaps his arm half-heartedly for making her heart half-beating out of her chest. He grins mischievously, and then kisses her cheek. “It’s just sex.”

 

“What?!” Her voice sounds like that of a mistuned horn. 

 

Keith sets her down in her seat, and then settles beside her as they wait for the crowd to file out of the church for the dances, and bestowal of flowers. “It’s really not that bad. Jeez. You’d make a guy think that you didn’t like him with all of that noise.”

 

“But what exactly does that mean? You can’t just say ‘sex’ and expect me not to have questions.”

 

He leans in close, and cups his hand around her ear. “The Keeper gives us each a potion, and it sets your body aflame with a heat that will not cease until we truly become one. Afterwards, a mark appears somewhere on your skin that shows that we actually did it, and a priest verifies it.”

 

It’s not that Katie doesn’t understand it; if anything, the Ward seems more final than all of the ceremonies and the like that a Terran wedding requires, but still. To have to have sex, and then prove that it’d been done… that’s mortifying.

 

Katie swallows, her cheeks burning like a fire. “That’s embarrassing!” She’s burning now from the embaressment, but when they actually do it, her cheeks will be hot enough to melt her where she stands. 

 

Keith squeezes her hand, a gentle smile still lingering on his face. “Only if you think that loving each other is something to be ashamed of.”

 

“Of course not.” She murmurs as a servant pours them each a goblet of wine. “I could never be ashamed of you- of us. It’s just-”

 

He slings an arm over her shoulder and presses a kiss to her forehead. “It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  
  


5.

(The moment she’s been waiting for)

 

Pidge does not remember why they must wait there in the church until their audience leaves, but she doesn’t mind it too much. If they leave, they’ll have to walk back to the castle on foot; another stupid tradition to make sure that the two of them can make it through even the toughest of times.The wine, the same wine that she’d received the day of her coronation, has made her eyes heavy, and her body slow. She feels comfortable here, with one of Keith’s arms around her shoulder, and her head laying against his chest. 

 

Matt and Shiro stop in front of their table, spare a smile, and as they start the short walk back to the castle, their hands come together and intertwine. Lance and Allura walk by too, grinning. He hands her an orchid, and winks, “For good luck tonight.”  Pidge thinks on its meaning, and then understands why Allura rolls her eyes, and tugs him off in a rush.  _ Fertility,  _ as in, good luck on making babies tonight. Pidge scowls and sets it beside Shiro’s flower.

 

The crowds dwindle, grow scarce,disappear altogether and then they are alone, except for the Torchkeeper, and his aide, who carries a tray with two goblets on it as they approach. The Torchkeeper places a goblet in front of each of them. It’s made of gold, pure gold, with the curved points of daggers making the base, and their hilts intertwined to make the cup. Pidge peers into it, and blinks at the glinting liquid inside. It’s a dark, dark purple, and thick like blood, and smells sweet. Her reflection blinks back.  

 

“Drink.” The Torchkeeper says. 

 

Keith doesn’t hesitate. He downs the glass in a single gulp. Pidge sighs, and downs it too. It burns going down her throat, and when it settles in her stomach, she burns there too. At first, it is a dull flame; as if she is just a little too close to the fire, but as she shifts in her seat, suddenly awake, it’s like someone has lit a match in her veins. She looks over at Keith, but aside from his tinted cheeks, he seems fine, like he’s not affected at all. 

 

“I will see to you in the morning.” The Torchkeeper turns, and starts the walk back to the castle gates. 

 

As the two of them disappear on the trail back to the castle, Keith releases his breath, and grabs her hand. Where their skin touches, it is like the fire is tamed, held back at the bank of the river, but still close enough to warm her, to warn her of what it can do. Pidge gasps and tries to chase the feeling, pressing herself close against him as they cross over the church’s threshold. 

 

“Why are we going back inside?”

 

“Do you truly think either of us could wait until we got back? I can hardly wait now.”

 

She closes the door behind them as Keith leads her to the belltower, like a spark chasing a trail of black powder. 

 

“Then don’t.” She says softly, voice low with the weight of expectation.

 

They hardly make it into the room before Keith’s composure breaks, and he shoves her up against a wall, his mouth meeting hers in a burst of burning coolness. He’s treating her gentle, as if either of them wants it that way; slow and delicate, ha! As if. 

 

As his tongue traces her lip like an ice cube on her skin, Pidge tangles her fingers in his hair, and pulls hard, until he kisses her harder. His breath is sweet against her face as he pants, pulling back only for a moment to survey her dazed expression before shifting lower, and sucking on the smooth skin of her neck. His teeth test the skin of her shoulder, the crook of her neck, and she decides that the pain feels good. It heightens her mind like coffee in the midst of an all-nighter. She gasps, tries to breathe, but the air feels hot around her, like boiling water making tea of Keith’s scent. Her stomach- no, not her stomach, something beneath that, where the heat is slowly pooling like condensation, weighing her down, makes her ache and throb for something that she just can’t identify, and she chases the feeling, bucking against his thigh pressed between her legs. A moan escapes her throat; a sound that can’t even come close to capturing the want that she feels, but it seems to urge him on, as he ravages her even more roughly than before. 

 

It’s like they’re fighting again, she thinks, each of them trying to control the other, to force the other to admit defeat and reach the peak that they are both climbing to blindly. Well two can play at that game.

 

Pidge cups his length in her palm, presses against it hard, and then squeezes. Her nails dance against it carefully, always pulling away before the stimulation gets to be too much. Keith grunts, and grabs her hands, pinning them above her. 

 

“Now what’ll you do? Can you think your way out of this one?” He teases as he undoes the buttons on the front of her dress with his teeth, and grinning devilishly as her dress spills open, revealing her chest to the open air. It’s not like she’s got much to look at, but he doesn’t seem to mind as he licks at her breasts, sucking on one nipple and then the other until they are both pink and puffy, leaking heat down to that deep, dark place and dragging her towards that edge. 

 

Pidge strains against his hands, but when he decides to wield it against her, his strength outdoes her own. She plays at giving up, waiting for him to lean close again, and kiss her mouth again before bucking against him, rubbing herself against his length. He growls at her once more, but doesn’t break away from the kiss, only switches to holding both of her wrists in one hand. She wonders what he could possibly be doing with the other, but then she feels him lifting her skirts up, and pressing a finger against the nub of her sex. 

 

She moans again, a high keening sound, as he rubs uneven circles against her. He switches his pace as she kisses him back, as her thigh presses against his dick, and the unpredictability of it all is what drags her to the edge. 

 

“Ah! I’m almost, almost-” Keith stops suddenly, and then flips her around, pushes her skirts up around her, and bends her over the window frame, the only one in the building left without a pane. Her bare torso hangs over the ledge, the chilled air doing nothing to soothe the returning heat, and although she is high, high enough for the fall to kill her, it only thrills her more. 

 

Keith plunges into her so fast that she doesn’t even have time to feel the pain. His hand returns to her sex, rubbing her with stilted, jerky motions as he fucks her from behind. She turns around, one hand on the window for balance, and they kiss again, and again in one unending movement until Pidge cries out, clenching around him as all of the heat and pleasure and everything good leads to a single point in her core. Keith grunts, and his mouth falls open just as she starts to fall from her climax, and she can feel it, warm and wet inside of her as he comes. She kisses him then, bites his lip hard enough to leave an imprint. 

 

When they finish, the heat from the elixir drains away, and the exhaustion that she had felt earlier returns in full force, harder even. Pidge slumps against his chest- still clothed in his wedding finery, though wrinkled now, and damp with sweat. 

 

“Worth the wait, right?” He asks as he carries her over to a bed made in there corner that she could’ve sworn hadn’t been there the last time they’d been here. Neither of them bothers to get out of their clothes, or to clean up as they climb into it, and pull the covers over their shoulders. 

 

“Yeah,” She kisses him again, soft and tender like she’s drinking his soul from his lips, and presses her back to his chest, nuzzling into his heat. “I guess it was.”

 

THE END

 


	16. Attention:

During this year, I will be converting this story into a fantasy novel. Some things will change, such as the inclusion of magic, changing of names and genders, but for the most part, the plot will stay the same. If you have any suggestions for improvement, feel free to leave a comment below, and keep an eye out for the finished work.


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